Whether you call it an incipient American fascism or Trumpist authoritarianism, a reactionary, anti-democratic movement has seized hold of the Republican Party and many millions of Americans. It’s a movement that Donald Trump catalyzed, but whose ambitions and power reach far beyond the former president’s wrecking ball appeal, drawing on the darkest strains of American history and society. White supremacism and perceptions that white Americans are losing their privileged status in American society; chronic economic hardship for too many middle- and lower-income Americans, fueled by an extreme, unrestrained form of capitalism; a militant and un-Christian Christianity that provides moral, even theological justifications, for battling America’s democracy and imposing its views on others; a war on terror that has supercharged fantasies of an America under siege by dark-skinned infidels; a right-wing media apparatus dedicated to propaganda and incitement against fellow Americans and immigrants alike: all these and more are long-term pathologies that have helped bring us to this dystopian but very real age of danger.
Many of us hoped that the defeat of Donald Trump last year would shut down the hideous movement that he had come to represent, but the reality is that we gained only a temporary respite, if that. In defeat, the authoritarian movement around Donald Trump showed its true nature in unambiguous terms, as the former president attempted a coup to remain in power, and then persuaded the bulk of Republican Party politicians to parrot his Big Lie that the election was stolen from him. In the year since, this Big Lie has been adopted by a majority of Republican voters, and GOP politicians have used it as a basis for a determined attack against democracy at the state level. From voter suppression and gerrymandering, to bills allowing state legislatures to decide who wins elections, the Republican Party has substituted a lust for power over the most basic democratic principles or loyalty; the January 6 coup never ended, but only transformed into a slow-rolling insurrection.
So this authoritarian menace has only continued to grow over the last year, to encompass a broader attack on the rule of law and a reactionary cultural assault on the nation. As political scientist Jason Stanley writes in a chilling and essential assessment that traces the rise of what he terms an American fascist movement, it includes creating a sense of menace posed by outsiders like immigrants and minorities; legitimization of political violence in the form of right-wing militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers; fanning the flames of racism and creating a sense of a true American culture under assault via the made-up threat of critical race theory; and denigrating the rights of women, and asserting the primacy of males, by a full assault against legal abortion.
Stanley describes the United States as being in “fascism’s legal phase,” with the Republican Party moving from fascist propaganda to attempting to enact laws and policies based on these extremist ideas, so as to ensure they are part of the legal and social framework we are all forced to live and breathe. In other words, we’re past the point where the GOP has declared war on democracy and a free, egalitarian society — it’s already well on its way to enforcing this twisted vision on all of us. Even as Democrats control the presidency and Congress, the GOP is implementing these changes in multiple states, transforming the daily, lived reality of million of Americans to the point that in some states, like Wisconsin, we can no longer even say that American citizens there actually live in a democracy, or in others, like Texas, we can no longer say that women have anything close to equal rights under the law.
In describing this legal assault on basic pillars of American society, Stanley highlights the basic fact that Republican authoritarianism constitutes far more than just an attack on our election systems (as profoundly, existentially a dangerous as that attack is). This movement includes an evolving but very real substantive agenda that includes denigration of women and minorities, the infliction of violence on political opponents, the rejection of science in public health, and the promulgation of a misleading vision of American history that substitute myth for reality. It’s not just a movement to illicitly gain power at the expense of the American majority — it’s also a movement with ideas of what it will do with the illicit power it wields, to the point that we might more accurately describe it as an assault on American society itself.
Stanley departs from what has been the default way of talking about Republican authoritarianism, both by the media and by the Democratic Party, in which the GOP’s assault on democracy is treated as both the primary challenge, and as somehow separate from what the GOP would do once in power. Yes, it is a very good thing that GOP election subversion has increasingly (and rightly) begun to receive a level of media attention commensurate with the threat it poses. And while it hasn’t yet resulted in countervailing, corrective legislation, the Democratic Party has likewise identified the GOP’s election-sabotaging legislation as a direct threat to democracy and Democrats. But by treating the question of GOP means as somehow separate from GOP ends, and focusing on election subversion as separate from the substance of Republican governance, such rhetoric inadvertently downplays the full extent of the threat posed by this authoritarian movement. It makes it sound as if the GOP is “merely” gaming the electoral system, when the reality is much darker and of equal threat to the lives, livelihood, and basic dignity of American citizens. It constitutes a wholesale effort to reshape American society based on white supremacism, a perverted version of actual Christianity, misogyny, contempt for the natural world, and unbridled exploitation of American workers.
I understand why reporters and others in the media would focus on the GOP’s assault on democracy — this is obviously a huge story, and a key element of what’s going on here. But after having read many, many excellent recent articles on this topic, a persistent theme of abstraction prevails. The articles all too often assume an objective, political science perspective in which the actual, substantive consequences of the GOP establishing a one-party state are somehow kept out of view — as if the GOP were trying to gain illicit power simply for its own sake. This may strike some as a perverse critique — can’t we just be happy that the media are finally talking about the GOP’s assault on democracy!, you might be saying to yourself right now — but this phenomenon points to the limits of relying on the media to fully limn our present crisis. The incentive for most journalists is to appear value-free, to not take sides on substantive issues; to draw the line between the Republicans’ assault on democracy and its assault on American society may be a bridge too far for most to make.
But make no mistake: behind the GOP war on democracy lies a war on a free and egalitarian American society, and this is also what needs to be talked about, by as many people as can make their voices heard. If journalists can’t do so, then opinion writers and others must talk about this basic reality of our situation. The Republican assault on liberal, humanitarian values and a society based on them needs to be relayed in concrete, everyday terms, because this is where millions of Americans will be suffering if this authoritarian effort succeeds.
As an example of what such coverage and analysis can look like, this Ronald Brownstein article in The Atlantic looks at how Republicans are employing their ill-gotten political power to roll back decades of civil rights gains by women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community. But there’s plenty more at stake beyond Brownstein’s excellent survey. This reactionary movement takes aim not only at Americans’ rights, but at the federal government’s ability to regulate the economy, our health system, environmental protections, and more. A woman’s right to an abortion; a child’s ability to breathe free air and grow up on a planet not ravaged by climate change; the ability of the economy to operate without the crippling effects of cronyism and corruption; the freedom of teachers to teach science and fact-based history; the right of all of use to go to the supermarket without worrying about being gunned down by an extremist with an AR-15; our ability to go to the doctor or take time off work when we’re sick — in short, our collective ability to live lives of dignity, collective empowerment, and meaning is now in the crosshairs.
So there is much more that the media can do to explain the dangers American society faces. However, there is also no substitute for Democratic politicians rising to the occasion and articulating the true stakes of our moment — not just in drawing out the substantive horrors of the GOP’s vision for America, but, equally importantly, in proposing a countervailing, superior vision of American life in the 21st century. There is no reason to be in a defensive crouch against the authoritarian GOP, whose war on democracy signals above all else its basic unpopularity and inability to win majority support in this country. This is ultimately not just a conflict over particular policies, but over basic societal values. A fundamental imbalance between Democrats and Republicans is that the GOP is doing a much better job in communicating its larger vision to its voters. While the Democrats will never be able to match the diabolical coherence of the GOP’s authoritarianism — white men should be at the top of the social hierarchy, with the rest of the population to be exploited and kept in check by force if necessary — a Democratic legislative agenda should reflect basic humanitarian, egalitarian values supported by a clear majority of Americans. If the GOP is attempting to remake American society based on a reactionary, immoral template, then Democrats have a responsibility for engaging in the fight at such a societal level, as a basic matter of alerting Americans to the stakes of this conflict and rallying them to political involvement.
In turn, Democratic politicians can draw on the existence of vast progressive social forces and trends to make their case for a more egalitarian, inclusive society. From women’s rights to gay rights, from the labor movement to the environmental movement, progressive, forward-thinking ideas have found great purchase among the American people over the last few decades — part of the reason we’re now experiencing this reactionary backlash. But the existence of backlash speaks to the strength, not weakness, of these progressive forces in American society, as counter-intuitive as that can feel at times. The underlying trend is an increasing embrace of equality, tolerance, and mutual respect, which is clearly at odds with the white supremacism and misogyny of the authoritarian GOP.
And underlying this trend, in turn, is a faith — democratic in nature, but reaching far beyond the limits of our political system — that we can basically trust our fellow Americans to treat us as we’d like to be treated, that we’re bound by basic human values and are subject to the same universal human challenges, and, crucially, that there is an ongoing need to improve our social order by fighting against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other anti-human elements of our shared world. This is the faith and the reality that the majority of Americans have been practicing and living for many years now — a society-wide democratization whose continuation is the only way forward if we are to ever become a truly just and democratic nation. In this time of peril, the American majority united by humane, progressive values needs to become aware of itself, needs to understand that we have a broad set of beliefs to which we subscribe, and that make all of us better and stronger for doing so. Creating such self-awareness needs to be a top priority for pro-democracy activists and politicians, in order to catalyze the mass political mobilization and democratic action needed to defeat the authoritarian challenge.
I’m sure that others can come up with far more expansive and persuasive accounts of the underlying beliefs that unite most Americans. The far more important thing than arriving at some sort of doctrinaire definition of majority opinion, though, is to actively discuss and articulate these values, in order to make clear that they do exist, and to recognize the degree to which Republican authoritarianism is a refutation of these broadly-held values and an assault on the society that holds them. To bring this back to the point I made earlier, it’s the difference between emphasizing that Republicans want to take aware your right to vote, and emphasizing that Republicans want to take away your right to vote so that they can replace our collective, humane but imperfect effort to build a better country with a deranged vision based on exploitation, white supremacism, and violence. It means engaging on grounds that will rally the American majority by reminding us what’s good about our current society (including our collective ability to try to improve what’s immoral or unproductive), and that the GOP seeks to replace our open society with a reign of racism, suppression of women, crony capitalism, and yet more gun violence by criminals and domestic terrorists alike. These are the true stakes of the GOP assault on democracy — it’s ultimately an assault on our ability to live our daily lives as we see fit, to undo an American consensus based on mutual respect, equality, and progress. It’s a movement that seeks to replace actual, lived freedom with intrusion into our workplaces, our intimate relations, and our personal autonomy. We don’t just need to fight against this foul movement; we also need to fight for a superior moral and democratic American society that is already within our grasp, and perhaps closer than we think.
