Most sentient Americans know this election isn’t normal–and that it’s pivotal. And from all indications, it is very, very close.
If there was ever any doubt about the basis of Donald Trump’s appeal, his recent speeches should dispel them. As his mental faculties–such as they were– continue to deteriorate, he has become less inhibited, engaging more directly in appeals to fear and– especially– hate.
As a recent article in The Bulwark reported,
The Two Minutes Hate was a famous feature of Orwell’s portrayal of Oceania in 1984. The Two Months of Hate is now a notable feature of the 2024 U.S. presidential contest. Donald Trump and his allies are closing this campaign with two months of hate in a way we’ve never seen before. And it could work.
Trump has “abandoned any pretense of debating real issues or proposing serious programs. “In the closing weeks of this campaign, any mask of democratic normalcy and civic decency has been tossed aside.” He hasn’t just accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of the country, he has also accused Americans who disagree with him of being “the enemy within.”
Trump told Maria Bartiromo that an even bigger problem than “the people who have come in who are totally destroying our country” is “the enemy from within.” He called them “very bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics.” And he said they could “be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”…
Are Trump and Vance being punished at the polls for this intensification of lying and hatred? Not at all. The Trump-Vance ticket seems to have gained a bit in the last two weeks, just as the hatred and darkness have become more central to their message. It turns out that what it means to be an undecided or swing voter is to be undecided about the choice between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. And the swing voters seem to be swinging towards authoritarianism.
It’s shocking and depressing. One could tell oneself in 2016 that Trump won despite the lies and hatred. Now if he wins, it would seem to be because of the lies and hatred.
If this seems chillingly unAmerican to most of us, it’s because we’ve opted to ignore the long history of American Nazism. That history was traced in a 2021 Washignton Post article.
Even during World War II, as the United States mobilized to defeat Nazi Germany and portrayed itself as an “arsenal of democracy,” Americans remained divided about who deserved to be treated as a full citizen. In an era when restrictive nationalist and authoritarian movements took power across Europe and Asia, even explicit appeals to Nazism attracted adherents in the United States.
As the article pointed out, the idea central to Nazi fascism — the argument that “real” Americans needed to be protected from those threatening “others” — was hardly foreign to Americans steeped in deep traditions of racism and nativism.
Trump recently announced that he will be holding a rally in Madison Square Garden–bringing to knowledgable ears an echo of the Bund’s February 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden. That rally drew more than 20,000 enthusiastic supporters under banners that included swastikas and images of George Washington.
It wasn’t just the Bund.
Father Charles Coughlin — a Roman Catholic priest with a popular radio broadcast in the 1930s — went even further, mixing anti-semitic rhetoric with direct support for Adolf Hitler. Eventually forced off the air in 1942 and nearly defrocked by the church for his pro-Nazi politics, Coughlin’s near-decade of national popularity reflected the appeal those beliefs had for a measurable segment of the American public.
The Post profiled a number of other prominent Nazi sympathizers, for whom “democracy was worth sacrificing to preserve the dominance of the White race — as they defined it.”
Just as the revived KKK in the 1920s enjoyed mainstream support, the ideas animating U.S. fascist groups were hardly fringe. In April 1940, when asked whether “Jews have too much power and influence in this country,” a national majority answered, “yes.” After U.S. entry into the war, public participation in pro-Nazi organizations ceased, but the sentiments remained. In July 1945, the number of Americans who responded “yes” to this question about influence had risen to 67 percent.
The war drove American Nazis underground, but nativism, anti-semitism and authoritarian tendencies did not vanish, even in the fastest-growing city in the country, Los Angeles. Los Angeles had been one of the largest centers of Klan activity outside the South in the 1920s and 1930s. A Klan member had been elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1923.
Polling tells us that America’s Presidential race is essentially tied. If that’s accurate, it can happen here.
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