You Can’t Appease Fascists!

What does calling for “unity” mean at a time like this?

The news is a nightmare. A man often at great pains to insist he’s not a fascist is, right now, threatening to act like a fascist if he’s elected president.

Donald Trump has signaled to us all, loud and clear, that he believes the U.S. military can and should be used against the people he calls “the enemy from within . . . radical Left lunatics.” He’s put members of Congress in that category. For years, he has called the free press “the enemy of the people.” It’s not hard to work out whom he means: the people who oppose and criticize him. Anyone, potentially.

Trump’s rhetoric has grown so incendiary that it’s prompted his own former chief of staff, retired Marine Corps general John F. Kelly, to denounce him as a fascist.

Even if the U.S. Constitution allowed the use of the military to round up criminals — it doesn’t — Trump has specified no crime committed by “the enemy from within,” provided no proof of a crime. He floats vague conspiracy theories, and he never brings the receipts. This has been his modus operandi since he made his debut in politics with “birtherism,” the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. It’s how Trump attacks anyone he wants willy-nilly, the truth be damned.

It’s how dictators operate. Raising the specter of deploying the military against the American people — any of the people, for any reason Trump likes — is only the last in a long line of tip-offs that he really wants to be a dictator.

Trump is a fascist, plain and simple.

Last night, I read this note by a popular Substacker:

I thought a lot about how I wanted to use my voice during the US election. I have very strong opinions on who should be president, but I don’t believe my opinions will influence anyone who is on the fence, and I don’t believe saying my opinions out loud will lead to more unity. So I voted (from across the world!) and wrote a post focused on our urgent need to work together instead. (It will come out during the election cycle next week in hopes that no matter the results we can show up productively for our next steps).

As a writer, it would be very easy for me to just write about my opinions all the time, but it’s also my responsibility to think about the effects those opinions will have. I think it’s more important to have productive conversations between people of varying political parties than it is to perpetuate the “us and them” groups we have divided ourselves into. Division is the thing we need to end most of all and a central cause of the problems we’re facing, and that’s why my vote is for unity between us, now more than ever.

I was stupefied, staggered, left aghast. A litany of questions and retorts crowded my head, and I could hardly sort them. I was bowled over by how this person donned the mantle of civility, respect, and reason in order to say nothing meaningful at all.

Your vote is “for unity between us, now more than ever”? What does that even mean? A vote “for unity” is a vote for whom, exactly? You’re not saying? For anyone, then? Just vote for whomever — and that will unify us?

You recognize you have a voice — a following and a megaphone — but, in spite of your “very strong opinions,” you’re choosing not to use it? For the sake of “unity”?

With whom do you want unity? Surely, you’re not talking about people on the right side of things already. We’re pretty much unified in our opinion of what’s going on, why it’s terrible, and why it must be stopped. Joining this choir divides no one. Are you talking, then, about the people on the wrong side of things?

If so, have you seen how fascistic they’re getting? How insistent they’ve become on the contention that their opponents — all of us — are evil, through and through? Do you believe they’re the least bit interested in unity?! Do you believe they’ll let divisions heal, let the country reunify? Does that serve their interests?

Many of these folks want me, people like me, and people with whom I’m aligned — in a nutshell, LGBTQ+ people — dead, imprisoned, or at least stripped of our civil rights. They make no secret of it. After that, anyone talking about “unity” with them seems to be saying, “I’m fine with your killing, with anyone’s killing, or with people being jailed or deprived, as long as I suffer no unpleasantness.” When you appease fascists, this is what you’re saying in the end, whether you mean to say it or not.

And even then, do you really believe you’ll suffer no unpleasantness?

That’s not how fascism works! Fascists gain power by demonizing enemies. But they offer no actual solutions to society’s problems, so to keep power, they continue to demonize enemies, which means they need a constant supply of enemies. (Look at how the list of people Trump considers “enemies” just keeps growing.) Let them put people up against the wall, and sooner or later they’ll put you up against the wall. We all know the poem by Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Communists...”

And if you’re really not talking about “unity” with those people — if instead you mean persuadable, undecided people — how do you persuade anyone without saying where you stand, just for a start? Without being clear on what you stand for? Without telling the truth about the other side, what it stands for, and why it should be opposed, never mind if that’s “divisive”?

In its current composition, the Republican Party will accuse Trump’s critics of being divisive no matter how gently we play ball and try to avoid provoking them. For years, I’ve heard these people say Obama was the most divisive president ever. If asked why they believe that, they produce not one shred of credible evidence. They believe it just because it feels right to them. (Oh, I wonder why!) The accusation of “divisiveness” is their go-to melee weapon against all foes. What’s the point of tiptoeing around it?

When I objected to this Substacker’s line of reasoning, she responded:

But what will be the most effective way to hold the line against authoritarianism? There are plenty of people speaking very clearly about their opinions and it’s not working. The candidates themselves have shown exactly who they are to the American people and people are just becoming firmer in their responses. Think about how to win an argument. It’s not by telling the other person you’re right.

And you don’t win by ceasing to make an argument, either!

It’s not working? Fight anyway, and fight hard!

When we slink into hidey-holes and cede the field, all it does is confirm the other side’s righteousness and embolden them.

Think about how we got to this point in the first place. People lived in their echo chamber, never hearing much at all from “the other side.” This made it easy for such an unscrupulous person as Trump to demonize people wildly. Few people inside the echo chamber dared to challenge him on it, and those who did were eventually pushed out. Now that he’s promising to unleash his fury on all the folks he’s demonized, you think the best strategy for opposing that is to respect the echo chamber?!

I’m all for unity, just as soon as my countrymen reject authoritarianism, lawless vindictiveness, and the slide into a pit of bigotry, hatred, and fear as the way forward. Let them only do that, and I’m open to dialogue with them. But there’s no dialogue to be had with people holding your country hostage with threats of violence if they don’t get their way. Appeasing them is like appeasing a toxic abuser: you’re only laying the groundwork for more abuse.

We’re in a street fight for democracy. Now’s not the time to hold back and say, “I’m above the fray.” Now, more than ever, is the time to tell people what you really think, to say where you really stand. Make the argument!

A house in your neighborhood has caught fire. In one hand you hold a phone, and in the other you hold a megaphone. Are you not going to call the fire department? Are you not going to put that megaphone to your lips, call out the neighbors, and get their help putting out the fire and saving the people in that house?

Are you just going to stand there? For unity? With whom? Arsonists?

Compared to this popular Substacker with her ~19,000 subscribers, I’m small fry (27 subs). If she wore her politics on her sleeve and lost some subs, it’d be no great loss to her. If I lose just a few, it’s a substantial fraction of what I have.

I don’t care.

With this political screed, I may alienate potential future readers. I may make it hard ever to get more than a few dozen subscribers.

I don’t care.

With such a small audience, I have no reason to think I can move the needle the least bit, either. I doubt I’ll inspire anyone to vote who wasn’t already going to.

I don’t care.

If you stick around after having seen me get shrill about this, some of you may find it easier to dismiss my opinions — for instance, the dystopian outlook on the Singularity I’m expressing in the “Infinite Lock-In” series.

I don’t care.

This is a time to stand and be counted. If we don’t do it now, tomorrow’s news will be a worse nightmare. Please stand with me.

I promise this is the only election coverage you’ll get from me. I know we’re all sick of hearing about it! jl