Election 2020: Creeping Fascism Confronts the Fascist Creep

(illustration by Lliam Bosaz-Reaves)

Roger LeBlanc (author of The Punter’s Tale)

Two little Hitlers fight it out until

One little Hitler does the other one’s will.

— Elvis Costello

Mussolini defined fascism as the merger of state and corporate power. Hitler pursued that model too.

These days people use fascism as a catchall term for a dictator who relies on propaganda and police-state force to hold power. That loose definition appears dead accurate lately.

But the police-state focus catches only the tail end of fascism. It fails to describe the face of fascism as it approaches us, as it lies and smiles and chews into the fabric of democratic societies. That means most people don’t ever see the F-train coming.

We’d be better protected from fascism by recognizing leaders who steer democracy toward it, not by settling on a definition that announces, “Congratulations, you have arrived!”

A nonpartisan look at Joe Biden and Donald Trump might be this democracy’s most effective anti-fascist prophylactic. A double-hulled rubber to render these wannabe dictators impotent. And, if it’s too late to accomplish that, an in-depth comparison of Biden and Trump might at least signal that delay tactics, such as lesser-of-evils voting, have failed and more radical solutions are urgently needed.

In 2016 the “deplorable” voters chose the demagogue Trump over the allegedly less deplorable Hillary Clinton, who vowed to force more corporate-backed globalization down Americans’ throats. In electing Trump, voters rejected the NAFTA/WTO Clintons, the “New World Order” Bushes and the drone-assassin, bankster-booster Obama.

Did Trump voters successfully veer this country off a fascist path or onto a fascist fast track? If so, would a return to neoliberalism administered by Joe Biden (who voted in favor of “fast-tracked” legislation such as NAFTA and WTO) put us on course to a more democratic future?

Candidate Biden: Preserving Democracy as a Smokescreen

Candidate Biden claims to be a friend of the working class. But records show he dedicated his career to lying, grafting, groping and plagiarizing. The last two aren’t necessary elements of fascism, but lies and graft are the art and craft that bind state and corporate power. Biden wields a clumsy but effective talent for both. And both can be sustained and extended only with police-state tactics.

Recently, in response to the protests and riots demanding police departments be reformed or defunded, Biden stated he supports increasing funding for police departments. So he agrees with Trump that police-state power should be increased, not decreased.

In the 1990s Senator Biden helped pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and create the World Trade Organization (WTO). These trade agreements, formulated in secret with no input from labor unions or environmentalists, subjugated all U.S. laws to international trade-tribunal reviews. NAFTA’s passage allowed U.S. corporations to move many factories to Mexico. WTO later expanded the list of poor and despotic countries American jobs could be shipped to.

(Spoiler Alert: These laws that weakened unions, impoverished much of the working class and shrank the middle class set the stage for some demagogue to exploit the anger of voters suffering from the devastating effects.)

To ensure his working-class constituents remained impoverished after losing jobs to low-wage foreign workers, Biden pushed through an infamous bankruptcy reform act. The economic woes inflicted on U.S. workers by NAFTA and WTO posed a threat to banks, so Biden, for a price, helped out major banks by turning borrowers into their indentured servants.

Maryland National Bank, a longtime Biden donor, benefitted enormously from the law’s passage in 2005. So did Biden’s son Hunter, who drew a large salary from MBNA as the legislation was drafted. Biden the Elder parlayed his lie of “new, high-quality jobs through NAFTA” with his graft of “bankruptcy reform” into a grand payday for the Biden clan.

Even greater fortunes visited the Bidens with his graft-roots support of corporate interests in the Ukraine, as he led U.S. efforts to corporatize the former Russian ally. Joe repeatedly bragged about blackmailing Ukrainian officials into halting their investigation of Burisma, the company that paid Hunter B. million of dollars for a no-show job in the Ukraine. Mainstream media let the scandal die in 2016, gladly assisting with Biden’s sundowning of the details. Somewhat comically Biden’s own party resurrected the Ukrainian scandal by accusing Trump of a similar crime.

Fascists know that misinformation is propaganda’s lifeblood. They also know missing information creates breathing room for those lies. That’s why the CIA/NSA stenographers at CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and other major outlets seldom mention Biden actions that smudge his “Working Class” Joe image:

• Mainstream media is hush-hush about Biden’s support in 2008 for bailing out the banks that crashed the U.S. economy.
• They gladly redact his greenlighting of large-scale media mergers with his support of the Telecommunications Act of 1994.
• They say not a whit about Biden rescuing health insurers from an increasing loss of customers by pushing the Affordable Care Act. (Forcing Americans to purchase defective healthcare coverage at exorbitant prices was the brainchild of notorious corporate-raider Mitt Romney and the largest insurance companies in Massachusetts.)

(Spoiler Alert: These laws that weakened unions, impoverished much of the working class and shrank the middle class set the stage for some demagogue to exploit the anger of voters suffering from the devastating effects.)

You don’t need a giraffe-length neck to glimpse back to Biden’s past exploits and connect them to his current policies:

• His 2008 support of bank bailouts connects to his 2020 support of the multitrillion-dollar Wall Street wet-nursing known as the CARES Act, which gave less than $1 trillion in aid to individuals and families while giving over $3 trillion in aid to corporations.
• His 2010 backing of national Romneycare was the warmup for his 2020 refusal to support Medicare For All even as the Covid-19 pandemic rages.
• His backing of Clinton’s crime bills that led to mass imprisonment of nonwhite drug users and the highly profitable privatization of prisons logically extends to his recent call to increase police funding.

These Biden policies and others helped deliver us within sight of the tail end of fascism: control of the populace through propaganda and, failing that, police-state violence.

Someday Google might delete all evidence of corporate fascism rather than simply algo-chaining the proof to a rusty radiator in its basement. Until then you can click Search to retrace the footsteps of Biden and his BFFs for a view of how fascism crept slowly but steadily across a dying democracy.

Candidate Trump: Turning Democracy into a Dumpster Fire

The neoliberal footprints stop abruptly in 2016, when they turn into the boot-stomped tracks of a petulant tyrant named Trump. Fascism, as befits this corporate-controlled nation, finally found a brand name.

What Trump voters got instead of restored democracy was a different flavor of oppression:

• Nationalistic fascism, rather than the international variety preferred by the Democratic Party
• An endless Kristallnacht of off-the-cuff, rock-tossing tweets, rather than well-formulated media distortions fed to the press by U.S. defense and intelligence agencies
• A big wall with Mexico (maybe), rather than a big war with Russia, which Hillary Clinton aimed for with her proposed “no-fly zone” over Syria

A parade of former business associates and sexual partners have illuminated Trump’s creepiness, but not any better than Trump has himself. His high praise for dictators, public ruminations about the sexual attractiveness of his daughter, jokes about sexual assault, uncontrollable spasms of insults, and ridicule of handicapped people sculpt a Rushmore-sized model of moral repugnancy. For color, toss in Stormy Daniels, Manafort the money launderer and Kushner the slumlord. His supporters expected Trump to drain the swamp in D.C., but Trump has instead swamped the drain.

Creepiness isn’t the only concern, though. Trump insists his judgment reigns supreme on all issues:

• He tosses dissenting Cabinet members and agency heads to the curb like tenants behind on the rent.
• He circumvents Congress in attempts to fund his wall along the border with Mexico.
• He launches hair-trigger trade wars of his own choosing.
• Trump single-mindedly picks enemies to threaten. North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, China, Syria and, yes, Russia have been taunted with military threats by Trump.
• He imposes illegal sanctions on undeclared enemies, although in that respect he’s no different than Presidents Clinton and Obama. But Trump even targets allies such as Canada, Mexico, Germany and Argentina. They’ve all felt the stings from wild flicks of Trump’s economic whip (such as Trump designating Argentina “a currency manipulator” as their peso and economy crashed uncontrollably).
• And he authorized the use of military force to subdue protests in Washington, D.C.

All tolled, Trump has kicked democracy a good hard one in the teeth.

Trump sticks to his delusion of flawlessness even though his years-long trade war with China crippled U.S. farmers, strangled the U.S. trucking industry and crashed the U.S. manufacturing index to levels not seen since the Great Depression of 2009 (even before the pandemic hit). His increased sanctions on Iran raised the profile of the Ayatollah and strengthened growing alliances between Middle East nations (including U.S. allies) and China.

So here we are. Biden or Trump? Which do you prefer:

• The slow, steady creep of Democratic Party (and old Republican Party) fascism, whose legislation chokes democracy like weeds gradually taking over a lawn?
• Or the prairie-fire fascism raging across the American landscape, with Trump proudly holding high the blackened match?

Either way, we’d better prepare to be rolled over by Corporate America, or to resist with greater resolve than we have in the recent past.