Are we headed for Fascism?

Many Americans, myself included, have been very worried about President Trump’s assault on our democratic institutions. Clearly, one of the most important norms in our democracy is that the loser cedes the Office of President to the winner, gracefully, if possible, and participates in a ceremony that transfers authority (and the Office of the President) to the winner.  There have been hiccups in this process in the past, most seriously in 1876.

The election of 1876 had echoes of the election of 2020. It was now 11 years since the end of the Civil War. In the election of 1872, Grant won handily, 286-66 over Horace Greely.  Two notable things happened during this election: 1) Horace Greeley died between the election and the counting of the electoral votes (his votes were divided among 5 men); and 2) five states (Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas) disputed the results.  Congress upheld the objections in Mississippi and Texas, but rejected them in the other three.

In 1876, the electoral system almost destroyed itself.  Reconstruction was being implemented in the former Confederate states, voters, especially black voters, were being intimidated, and the vote counts in several states (South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana) were being challenged. In the end, Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, received 250,000 more votes than Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican.  The electoral vote was complicated.  Tilden’s 184 electoral votes — the votes that would decide the Presidency — were still one short of a majority, while Hayes’ 165 electoral votes left him 20 ballots away. The votes of three Southern states and one western state still had not been counted. The 20 electoral votes remaining in dispute were one from Oregon and 19 from the three Southern states that still retained Republican-controlled electoral boards — Florida (4), Louisiana (8), and South Carolina (7). What complicated the matter was that Democrats in these states had won the state elections, but mostly by violence and fraud. Both parties claimed victory. The Republicans, who still held a majority on the electoral boards that would certify the election results, claimed that Hayes was elected because the Democrats’ used fraud, violence, and intimidation in the Southern states. They “threw out” enough Democratic votes for Hayes to win in all three states. The Democrats submitted their own list for Tilden.

The night before President Grant’s term expired, the Senate announced Hayes had been elected President. The deadlock was broken behind closed doors when Southern Democrats agreed to support Hayes’ claim for the Presidency if he would support increased funding for Southern internal improvements and agree to end Reconstruction, thus guaranteeing home rule — meaning white control — in the South. Hayes became President and the Southern Democrats could reverse with impunity the gains that blacks had made during Reconstruction. (Tilden and Hayes are presented below).

• 

• 

Where are we now?  Trump’s repeated refusals to 1) promise to accept the election results, 2) promise a peaceful transfer of power, 3) and accept the election results, is an unprecedented attack on our democracy.  The fact that Joe Biden is almost certainly going to be inaugurated on January 20, 2021 doesn’t diminish the danger of his actions, because they have been supported by a large number of elected Republicans (two-thirds of House Republicans and seventeen Republican Secretaries of State supported a frivolous Texas lawsuit). A large number of Republican voters believe Biden’s victory was not free and fair. (see below).

A Morning Consult poll, updated on December 15, found

• “A growing share of Republicans say Trump should never concede: 37 percent of GOP voters now say that the president should never concede, no matter what. That’s up from 29 percent last week, and 27 percent in mid-November, when Morning Consult first asked the question. 
• Overall trust in elections has plummeted among Republicans: Prior to the election, 66 percent of GOP voters said they had at least some trust in the U.S. election system. In the latest poll, that dropped to 33 percent. Democratic trust, meanwhile, jumped from 63 percent to 83 percent.
• Republicans dig in on belief the election was not free and fair: Despite no evidence of widespread fraud, just 27 percent of Republican voters say the election was free and fair, a figure that has remained mostly static since the initial results were announced. Fifty-seven percent of independents and 94 percent of Democrats say the election was free and fair.”

Michele Goldberg writes, “It seems obvious enough that the spirit of Trumpism is fascistic, at least according to classic definitions of the term. In “The Nature of Fascism,” Roger Griffin described fascism’s “mobilizing vision” as “the national community rising phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it.” Translate this into the American vernacular and it sounds a lot like MAGA.” It’s true, however, that Trump was thwarted by the national security community and by many lower level public officials, including many Republicans.

The problem of mass movements became clear to me in the 50s when I read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believers. In it he says that mass movements begin with a widespread “desire for change” from discontented people who place their locus of control outside their power and who also have no confidence in existing culture or traditions.  Mass movements demand a “total surrender of a distinct self.” Individuals identify the most as “ members of a certain tribe or family,” whether religious, political, revolutionary, or nationalist. Every important part of the true believer’s persona and life must ultimately come from their identification with the larger community.” This, too, sounds a lot like MAGA.

Goldberg goes on to write, “Most consequentially, Trump has eviscerated in America any common conception of reality. Other presidents sneered at the truth; a senior Bush official, widely believed to be Karl Rove, famously derided the ‘reality-based community’ to the journalist Ron Suskind. But Trump’s ability to envelop his followers in a cocoon of lies is unparalleled.”

This raises another issue, which I have explored before, the rise of social media echo chambers. We are living in a world with no fixed political reality, no way of distinguishing facts from alternative facts.  In fact, the media, social and mass, are not a beacon of light, but deep shadows of darkness. Social media echo chambers lead to differing realities, a red reality and a blue reality. Ultimately, this epistemological crisis threatens our political system.

I am not sure which is most dangerous, the mass hysteria or the failure of leadership. In any case, we are not out of the woods. We can be thankful for those Republicans at a local level, secretaries of state and election officials who resisted the pull of this hysteria. The institutions held, but the abdication of most of the leaders of one of the two major parties is incredibly dangerous. We are lucky that, unlike Weimer Germany or pre-Mussolini Italy, we have a long tradition of democratic institutions that proved strong enough: the military and the police never intervened, and the courts, despite being packed with Trump loyalists, supported the law and the truth.  But the Republican Party, as a whole, surrendered its principles to the Trump hysteria. The future, with no agreed upon truths, a social media that distorts reality, a pusillanimous Republican Party, and a large group of supporters dedicated to the cult of Trumpism, contains a strong likelihood of a mass fascist movement. (Eric Hoffer and Karl Rove are depicted below).

• 

•