Comments
GUEST COLUMNIST--The New York Times finally, for the first time, warned of fascism — three weeks before an election in which America will be fighting for the soul of its democracy. LOL. If that makes you laugh, you’re not wrong. They — and I mean that they as generously as possible when it comes to America media, intellectuals, and power figures — should have warned you long ago. As seriously and as sternly as they could. Discussing its history and danger and swiftness. (And you, in turn, should have taken those warnings as seriously as you could.)
Alas, that is not how history works. Fascism’s handmaiden is denial — “it can’t happen here!!” But denial, at least among those who should know better, is precisely equivalent, morally, socially, and politically, to complicity. What is the point of having a Harvard education if you don’t even know a fascist when he’s staring you in the face, after all? What is the point of a Yale education if you graduate only to find yourself one? To be able to calculate a stock’s rate of return? You should laugh scornfully at such ignorance, my friends — a healthy sense of anger is what you should feel at how you have been treated thus far in the sad story of how fascism came to rise in America.
But let me tell you a little more about that story, from the inside.
About three to four years ago now, some of us began to warn in urgent, strident terms that all this before us now was a very real possibility, perhaps even a probability. How did we “know”? Well, we tended to have two things in common — we were people who had either lived through collapses like this before, or had studied them, or both. But that also made us something deeply unpalatable to American power structures: women and minorities. Minorities and women because we had the experience of growing up in authoritarian societies and systems, or at least bestride and beside them. Our warnings weren’t baseless, then — in fact, they were grounded on two forms of knowledge, not just one: lived experience, and theoretical understanding both.
For example, I began discussing how economic stagnation ignites fascist psychology, and others, like Sarah Kendzior, came from an anthropological place, some from a sociological perspective, and so on. What should — could, I think, in a smarter society — have happened was that together we formed a new way to think about a very old problem: how societies collapse into extremism, melding all these disciplines. But something else, something very funny, predictable, and very sad happened, instead — at exactly the moment that we started warning of America collapsing into very real fascism.
We began to be called names. We were hysterical and abrasive. We were outlandish and impossible to deal with. We were too strange and different to understand the “real” America. We were not to be believed, trusted, taken seriously — no matter how much we had accomplished. Soon enough, we came to be mocked, insulted, and reviled, if that is not too strong a word. We found ourselves blacklisted, more or less (which, of course, is also a pretty good sign of authoritarianism, LOL.) I don’t say that so you cry tears of pity for us, or to prove that we are especially smart. Quite the opposite. You should not, and we are not. I say it because such things reveal to us great truths about societies. About power and purpose, about courage and responsibility, and about whether, in the end, they are able to discover truth, or cling to falsity. I will come to all that, by way of asking: How could America ever believe that fascism was right around the corner — when Americans had been taught to believe that it was greatest country in all history, which was busy saving the world?
So, there we were, trying to warn, over and over again — “hey, this is the real deal! Fascism, authoritarianism, collapse, meltdown. This is not a drill! The house is on fire. Guys! Wake up!” And every day, the op-eds and cable pundits would regurgitate the same old hairball: “Where’s the fire? Calm down. You can’t call this fascism or authoritarianism!! Where’s the evidence? There’s no need for hysteria — and no room for hysterics!!” — while, day by day, a head of state was demonizing ethnicities, then banning them, then building camps, then putting infants on trial, then putting kids in them, and so on. What the? Do you see how sad and strange and funny and twisted this all is? Why was it happening?
(Now funnily enough, I’d never enjoyed my cable news appearances for a moment — just Google them. Do I look like I’m having fun? I’d put on my suit and grit my teeth, but I was much happier wearing my leather jacket, and making disco (I still am.) I’m the furthest thing from a careerist in the way that American punditry demands, because all I ever wanted to be was a musician to begin with. So, all this was as amusing personally to me as my grade school bullies discovering the hard way one day that I’m not the easy mark they supposed I must be, just because I was the skinny, frail kid. But I digress.)
We were being silenced and ignored and taunted because we were women and minorities. You are welcome to disagree with that if you like, still, you might want to consider it — because I think in the end, you will learn something. Who was the other side, the side in power, who scoffed indignantly, if not outright bellowed, shouted, and scolded — the moment we used words like “fascism”, “authoritarianism”, “concentration camps”, “collapse”, and still does — that we were hysterical, hyperbolic, difficult, groundless, and so on? It was made up of a certain kind of white man, to put it bluntly — one so mired in entitlement and privilege that an oblivious kind of clumsy, helpless mediocrity was going to be life’s greatest and only stumbling block.
I’m sure you see the irony already — it is outsiders who see signs of trouble, if not failures, like fascism and collapse first — but they are the ones whom insiders are least likely to hear, or allow to be heard. And so the more ensconced and insulated a society’s insiders are, the more fragile a place it is likely to be. (Let me put that another way.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, “bro” is a term of casual patriarchy in America — “hey, bro”, at least for a certain kind of guy also means: “hey, are you in this patriarchal tribe with me?” It’s very much a signal, a test, and a call. Gag, for me not being a bro means I am doing something right.) The point is that we were women and minorities, and the people who shouted we must be wrong, since we were hysterics and fools and dangerous outsiders, curiously, were more or less all brothers in the tribe. A tribe of usually elite white American men in media, politics, or academia (or people who wanted so much to be them, they’d assented to the Faustian bargain of patriarchy: being servile to the tribal brothers, forever.)
(Hence, without once thinking, reasoning, considering, reflecting — we were turned into something between villains, liars, fainting Victorian women, and monsters. “Umair’s so hyperbolic!! So controversial!” Wait — was I the one telling a nation I was about to put an entire ethnic group of babies in camps? LOL. Maybe you see my point. Was anyone even thinking at all by this point?)
Now. At this juncture, perhaps you object. “Hey, dummy, maybe your argument wasn’t strong enough! Maybe you didn’t shout loud enough! It must be your fault!” My friend, you confuse the job of the intellectual — or in my case, let us just say the observer — with the pundit, the salesman, the con-artist. If you want bellowing tyrants, by all means, demand that those who shout loudest should be heard most. If you want strong arguments, then you must ask — by what means should we evaluate claims? And that is precisely the heart of the matter.
You see, we were dismissed not because we were proven “wrong” — that would have taken investigation, consideration, and thought. We were dismissed because the idea that this could be the real thing was not considered, really, at all. It was outside the realm of possibility — absolutely, unquestionably, an article of faith. Thanks to a fatal cocktail of ignorance, folly, hubris, and conformity, drunk with cheers of pride — which is patriarchal insiderism’s price, and its downfall, too. “It can’t happen here! You can’t take those people seriously — they’re not like us! They’re just — women and weirdos!”
And that brings me to the point of this little essay. How did America end up so hilariously, amazingly, spectacularly stupid, it couldn’t even figure out when fascism, comic-book fascism, in fact — replete with cartoon dictator, demonization, scapegoating, camps, bans, and so on — was rising right in front of its eyes? I mean: how much more obvious could it ever be? I can’t think of a bigger test a nation’s thinkers and ideas and public discourse can fail than that, really, can you? “America” doesn’t mean you personally — but at a social and cultural level, this lack of understanding was certainly true. Yet seeing fascism in all this hardly took a genius, which is why many of you agreed with us, not with them. It’s not that we were geniuses, my friends —we were not — it’s that America’s wise men ended up being modern history’s greatest fools. But why was that?
It is because under the terms of patriarchy, the more unlikely the thesis, the more dangerous the idea, the more you must belong to the tribe. In a tribal system, to really present a new idea, an upsetting or challenging one, you must conform that much more. But conformists are never likely to have such ideas, are they?
That is why tribal systems have never been very smart ones, my friends. Have you ever seen a tribally organized society discover, advance, propose, or create anything truly earth-shaking? Consistently? Have ideas, truth, progress ever mattered to tribalisms, like patriarchy? Of course not — that is why human progress didn’t really take off until democracy arrived. Mostly, tribal societies waste their time, energy, and talent erecting monuments to dead kings, like the Pyramids, or building palaces and warring over jewels for living ones. What they are eminently bad — dysfunctional at, incapable of — is really grappling with new ideas. That, of course, leaves them slow, stultified, and paralytic places, too. Tribal societies are also stupid ones, my friend — and wherever you see a stupid society, you should also probably know immediately it is a tribal one. The kind of place, perhaps, when fascism sneered and demonized little children before its very eyes, bellowed in denial— “it can’t happen here!”
Mostly, tribal systems protect and defend old ideas harder and harder every year — until they become superstititons, before which everyone must bow, or be punished. They defend and protect those old ideas from investigation, from examination, from ever being uprooted. They venerate them, until at last they become totems. Once they are totems, heads are added every year — the scalps of enemies, usually — so the totems tower into the sky.
Which ideas were the brothers of the American tribe protecting? The same old ones: “we are strong, we are mighty, we are self-reliant individuals, we are ruggedly responsible atoms. The whole world looks up to us! Why, we have built the whole world! Nothing good and true would be at all, without us, the brothers! Therefore, it can’t happen here! We would never let it — because we are the source of all that is good and true!” LOL — do you see the problem here yet? When we said — “watch out! This is fascism!” — because America was a patriarchy, we were questioning all the above — the power, strength, and dominance of the tribe’s brothers. So quite naturally, the brothers responded to us with an almost comical, caricature-worthy rage, all bluster and offended manners and intimidation. But what does all that reveal?
A patriarchy will always be more interested in saving face than facing truth. The price of a patriarchy is that it cannot admit any weakness — which means, intellectually, that it can never admit any fault, any error, any mistake, no matter how small. Which is why, even at this late stage, even now, American thinking refuses to really question capitalism, supremacy, or violence, as organizing principles for society. To do so would be to undermine patriarchy itself, wouldn’t it? Ah, my friends — now you see the problem. A society can save face or it can face truth — but it cannot do both.
Let me make that sharper. Do you see the effect of protecting old, dead, failed ideas until they become superstitions, on the intelligence, the wisdom, the courage of a society? It will grow a little dumber every year. Because instead of expanding its mind, learning, it has closed it, and now everything in it is shrinking. Such a society’s ability to both discover, reveal, process, share, and understand truths soon enough withers, until it is a place cowering under the weight of myths. Reason has turned to dust. History never existed. Facts are merely the most popular beliefs. Now it has become an empire of folly. The most vicious and cruel — who are also, of course, the stupidest — rule. Because when a society is a place governed by superstition, not by truth, then the one who can instill the most fear will rise — the one who can create the most spectacular imaginary monsters. He, of course, will be the man who can threaten the most violence.
By now perhaps you are growing uncomfortable. All this sounds eerily familiar — or at least it should. Isn’t all that strangely reminiscent of America? There is climate change — and instead of acting to fix it, precisely the opposite is happening. Florida appears quite happy to drown, and the man in the White House, LOL, doesn’t believe climate change exists at all. There is a stagnant economy — and instead of anything being done about it, the economists cry,” but the economy is booming!!” No, the economy isn’t booming when people are killing themselves because they’ve lost hope in their futures. LOL, are you kidding? Capitalism’s booming, which means people are being exploited mercilessly. There is anti-vaccination, every kind of conspiracism and fanaticism, a general refusal to engage or grapple with reality. But why should anyone? America’s patriarchs stopped demanding it for, or of, themselves, long ago. So why should we expect the average person to ask for it, either?
Do you see my point by now? In the strange and funny story of those of us who warned of American fascism rising, only to be taunted, mocked, and reviled by America’s central power structure — the patriarchal band of brothers which literally owns its media, public sphere, and so on, because we were women and minorities — lies also a telling parable about how a society collapses. Ideas can flow, unfurl, collide, and in that way reveal, discover, and expand truth — or they can be things to be feared, warded off with ritual denunciations, by placing the scalps of enemies upon the totems. A society can be a democracy, seeking truth amongst equals, or it can be a patriarchy, exerting dominance while demanding conformity — but it cannot be both.
America chose to be a patriarchy, long ago, and never really became much of a democracy. But that choice also left America dumb. It made it fatally, lethally foolish. When fascism rose — a poison whose cure lies in our hands — and even though it had minds in it who said — “but this is fascism. Beware!” — the best America could seem to do was reject such warnings, as dangerous, as impossible, as foolish, as outlandish. It stared at the cup before it, laughed — and took a long, delicious sip.
“It can’t happen here!”, cried the brothers of the tribe. Who had ever been mighty enough to challenge them before — and survive? They laughed, intoxicated. But this time, the poison began to course through the body. It ran through the veins. It set fire to the blood. The arteries began to corrode. The organs of society — courts, laws, norms, values — began to turn black, hemorrhaging violently. The nation writhed and shuddered in pain and shock.
The tribal brothers looked at each other, confused. Why was their motherland dying? This wasn’t poison — was it? Wasn’t it wine? And so just before the final moment, the last few breaths, they finally asked: were we meant to drink from this cup? But by now — was it too late?
And that, my friends, is how you get to the strange, laughable, comical situation of the New York Times finally — finally — asking if this really might be fascism just three short weeks before the crucial election which could shatter American democracy for good, like a mirror becoming — wham! — a million lethal, razor-sharp fragments.
Patriarchy makes societies violent, brutish, cruel, and false. There’s a simpler way to say that. It makes them too stupid to survive. As foolish as an America which went on thinking “it can’t happen here!” even while some of its very own minds warned, knowing full well what the price would be, that the cup it was about to drink deep from was full of poison.
(Umair Haque posts at Medium.com … where this piece originated.)
-cw
