This is not a drill: fascism is on the ballot

SAN FRANCISCO, California — The conclusion that Donald Trump is a fascist has gone mainstream and has received widespread publicity and confirmation in recent weeks. Such an understanding is a problem for Trump and his supporters.

At the same time, a small portion of people who consider themselves progressive, possibly crucial in these close elections, still argue that any differences between Trump and Kamala Harris are not big enough to vote for her in swing states. Resistance to fascism has long been a leading light in movements against racism and for social justice.

Speaking at an African National Congress conference in 1951, Nelson Mandela warned that “South African capitalism has developed into a monopoly and is now reaching the final stage of a monopoly capitalism gone mad, namely fascism.”

Before Fred Hampton was murdered in 1969 by local police officers who colluded with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the visionary young leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party said, “Nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all. “

But now, stopping fascism is not a priority for some who claim to be on the left. Regardless of the magnitude of this fateful moment, the danger of a fascist president leading a fanatical movement becomes an abstraction.

A persuasive critic of capitalism ended a column in mid-October as follows: ‘Choose your poison. Destruction by corporate power or destruction by oligarchy. The end result is the same. That is what the two ruling parties are offering in November. Nothing else. “

The difference between a woman’s right to abortion and the fact that abortion is illegal is nothing?

“The end result is the same” – so it shouldn’t matter to us whether Trump becomes president after campaigning with a constant barrage against immigrants, calling them “vermin,” “stone-cold killers” and “animals” , while warning against the “bad genes” of immigrants who are not white, and bigoted alarm bells raised about the immigration of “bloodthirsty criminals” who will “prey on innocent American citizens” and “will slit your throat”?

If “the end result is the same,” a mix of ideology and fatalism may ignore the expected results of a Republican Party that gains control of the federal government with a 2024 platform that promises to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history ‘. Or by getting a second term from Trump after the first, he could put three right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court.

Will the end result be the same if Trump makes good on his apparent threat to use the US military against his political opponents, whom he describes as “radical left-wing lunatics” and “the enemy from within”?

Capacities to protect civil liberties matter. That includes brutal Republican cuts to programs that provide minimal health care, nutrition and other vital aspects of a frayed social safety net. But these cuts are less likely to matter to the polemicists, who will not experience institutionalized atrocities firsthand.

Rather than being for personal absolution, voting is a tool in the political toolbox – if the goal is to prevent the worst and increase the chances of building a future worthy of humanity.

Trump has promised to be even more directly complicit in Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip than President Joe Biden has been. No wonder Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the Washington Post reports, “has shown a clear preference for Trump in this election.” During a phone call this month, Trump told Netanyahu: “Do what you have to do.”

Palestinians, Muslim leaders and other activists in the swing state of Arizona released an open letter days ago calling for Trump to be defeated. “We know that many in our communities are resistant to voting for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter said. “We understand this sentiment.”

“Many of us have had that feeling ourselves, even until recently. Some of us have lost many relatives in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply cannot vote for a member of the government who sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones.”

The letter continues:

“However, if we carefully consider the entire situation, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all our communities. We know some will strongly disagree. We only ask that you consider our case carefully. open mind and heart, respectful of the fact that we are doing what we believe is right in a terrible situation where only flawed choices are available.

“In our opinion, it is crystal clear that allowing fascist Donald Trump to become president again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people. A Trump victory would be an extreme danger to the Muslims in our country, all immigrants and the American pro-Palestinian movement. It would pose an existential threat to our democracy and our entire planet.

“Exercising conscience in its most humane sense is not about feeling personal virtue. It’s about caring about the consequences for the well-being of other people. It’s about collective solidarity.

“The consequences of refusing to help stop fascism are not limited to the individual voter. In addition, large numbers of people may pay the price for the self-centered conscience of individuals.”

Last week, the insightful article “7 Strategic Axioms for the Anxious Progressive Voter” offered a forward-looking way to put this presidential election into a future context: “Vote for the candidate you want to organize against!”

Do we want to organize against a fascist militaristic President Trump, with no realistic hope of changing policy… or against a neoliberal militaristic President Harris, with the possibility of changing policy?

For progressives, the answer should be clear.
IPS

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in paperback this fall with a new afterword on the war in Gaza.