YOUR
COMMENTSThe United States government is on fire. For
four years, the fundamentals of democracy have been under attack
by Donald Trump, his Vichy-like Congressional Republicans, and
right-wing media apparatuses along with numerous conservative
digital and social media outlets. As the inferno gained momentum,
it was doused with gasoline by reactionary media such as Fox
News, which spread disinformation, hate and bigotry. At the
same time, mainstream social media companies such as Twitter
and Facebook reproduced lies and conspiracy theories eagerly
appropriated by a social base filled with fascists, neo-Nazis,
militarists and far-right extremists. The slow burning fire
of violence erupted on Jan. 6 with a murderous assault on the
Capitol.
The match that
lit the fire was thrown by Trump who in a speech just before
the assault on the Capitol incited the audience to riot, repeating
what he had already said on his Twitter account. But Trump’s
actions alone on that day do not explain the insurrection.
The homicidal uprising was part of a coup in the making, enabled
by a series of events. These include: four years of lies and
misinformation about the viability of the democratic process;
an accelerating reign of lawlessness; a desecrating of the
Constitution; a growing legacy of personal corruption; the
expanding infamy of institutions of government such as the
justice department; a full-fledged embrace of ignorance over
reason and truth; the rollback of labour and environmental
protections; and a war against Black people and immigrants
from the southern border. The culmination of such actions
was the movement of white supremacy and right-wing ideology
from the margins to the centre of politics and power.
Under the Trump
machine, America has tipped over into the abyss of authoritarianism,
whose end point was the violence produced by an insurrectional
horde that stormed the Capitol, smeared the walls with excrement,
beat a police officer to death, and paraded through the corridors
of this revered institution carrying a Confederate flag.
Trumpism is a
worldview that defines culture as a battleground of losers
and winners, a world in which everything is rigged against
whites. This is a world in which unity disappears into Trump’s
right-wing assault on the public good, truth, the common good,
as reality itself dissolves into a right-wing propaganda machine
in which politics becomes “a plot to steal from (whites)
their natural due as Americans.” Trumpism defines power
as immunity from the law, and that the most admirable representatives
of power are those who are “triumphant and innocent
in the face of every accusation of incapacity, criminality
and unethical conduct.” How else to explain Trump’s
pardoning of grifters, political cronies and war criminals?
Far from being
the “almost opposite of fascism,” Trumpism paves
the way for deeply entrenched legacies of hate to be passed
on to his followers and future generations. Its goal is to
destroy any vestige of democracy as we know it, however flawed,
and replace it with a form of unmoored power free from any
sense of social, political, and ethical ethos.
Under Trumpism,
society increasingly reproduces pedagogical “death zones
of humanity” that undermine the capacity for people
to speak, write, and act from a position of empowerment and
be responsible to themselves and others. Against this form
of depoliticization, there is the need for modes of civic
education and critical literacy that provide the bridging
work between thinking critically and the possibility of interpretation
as intervention. Such bridging work is committed to the realization
that there is no resistance without hope, and no hope without
a vision of an alternative society rooted in justice, equality,
and freedom.
Trumpism evokes
the shadow of authoritarianism in the form of a resurgent
right-wing populism that dehumanizes all of us in the face
of a refusal to confront its specter of racism, lawlessness,
and brutality. Trump’s impeachment is only the beginning
of confronting the fascist ghosts of the past which Trump
proved are no longer in the shadows or on the margins of U.S.
politics.
The influence
of Trumpism will long outlast the aftermath of Trump’s
presidency making it all the more urgent to reclaim the redemptive
elements of responsible government , democratic ideals and
the public spheres that make a radical democracy possible.
It is time to reclaim the utopian ideals unleashed by the
history of civil rights struggles, the insights and radical
struggles produced by the Black Lives Matter movement, and
a cultural politics written in the language of justice, compassion,
and the fundamental narratives of freedom and equality.
