Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Global, and the Planetary

William E. Connolly, author of Facing the Planetary and of Climate Machines, Fascist Drives, and Truth. 

 

The Climate of History in a Planetary Age, by Dipesh Chakrabarty, is in my judgment the most compelling and encompassing book by a humanist on the complexities and asymmetries of the Anthropocene to date. Let me start by listing a few of its essential contributions and challenges to the humanities, and then hazard a couple of ways that it might be augmented.

First, Chakrabarty continually keeps our eyes, ears and feelings focused on the interdependencies and tensions between the global and the planetary. The global emerges as the invaluable focus by postcolonial and Marxist theories of the effects of capitalist imperialism and colonization, both on the colonizers and colonized. Attention to the global is crucial, but until recently its purveyors have ignored the ways volatile planetary forces set on deep time such as monsoon interruptions, ocean conveyor shifts, volcanic interruptions, asteroid hits, extinction events, glacier melts, drought patterns and so on become imbricated with national and global human histories.

 

Temporalities set on very different scales and vectors of time periodically intersect. Chakrabarty sometimes suggests that awareness of the planetary arose recently during the advent of the Anthropocene, intensified by the pandemic as the double crossing of a virus across two species. I would add that in what might be called the minor tradition of western thought a certain awareness of periodic planetary volatilities has been enunciated. I note the Theophany in the Book of Job, Hesiod’s Theogony, Sophocles, Lucretius and later Nietzsche as key cases in point. Danowsky and de Castro in The Ends of the Earth also show how this awareness is distributed in traditions of indigenous thought. What we encounter today mostly in Euro-American thought, then, is actually a form of awakening after the long period of cultural forgetting and denialism expressed most recently in theo-secular debates between Arendt, Heidegger, Tagore, Schmitt, Kant, Nehru, and others Chakrabarty reviews so compellingly. To me, the debating partners suppressed an alternative transcending their terms of debate.

Second Chakrabarty theme: extractive capitalism has played the most critical role in fomenting triggers to the Anthropocene as well as in helping to ensure that its worst early effects are imposed upon minorities within old capitalist states and upon tropical, semi-tropical and polar regions outside those states. But a focus on capitalism, while essential, is still insufficient. A large number of its critics within the old states and in decolonializing regions, Chakrabarty says, have also focused on promoting economic growth, fostering productivity, expanding classical modes of consumption and promoting mastery over the earth. These operative orientations are anti-capitalist, but they still embrace variants of a civilization of productivity and abundance, broadly construed. This means that while neoliberal capitalism, in particular, must be transformed to respond to the Anthropocene, classical ideals of socialist and communist productivism need to be reworked too. That combination poses a massive challenge. Chakrabarty’s critique of Jason Moore reflects the challenge. I will only add that, in my judgment, one source of aspirational fascist movements in so many countries today—-I note the United States, Brazil, the UK, Poland, Hungary as examples--is that many white members of the working class both sense that The Anthropocene poses a radical challenge to old projections into the future and mistrust alternative ideals advanced to respond to it. Fascism is a danger in this time tied to disavowed awareness of the Anthropocene amid adamant commitment to neoliberal capitalism under unfavorable planetary conditions. Neoliberalism both fosters periodic crises and invites fascist responses to them.

 

Third, in discussing the power of the Indian caste system Chakrabarty begins to explore how caste orientations are embedded not only institutionally sanctioned privileges but also in what might be called the visceral register of cultural life. It is overdetermined. The visceral register can sometimes be in tension with refined, deliberative articulations. Collective patterns of disgust, for instance, can become embodied in institutional dependence upon the Dalit mixed with a foreboding sense of the danger they impose to the health and dignity of the upper classes. We are “porous bodies” Chakrabarty insists; commitments to growth, productivity, and classical infrastructures of consumption have also become engrained in subject/object relations within the institutions to which we are habituated. I have affluent male friends, to cite one very modest instance, who tell me that the silence of electric cars distresses them. Others may find that preparing compost every day mildly disgusting. To come to terms with the Anthropocene means, in part, to retrain the visceral register of cultural life, including differential, visceral habits of attraction, expectation, and disgust engrained in us. I only add that this register of culture is also critical to the fascist dangers of today, as white working and lower middle class constituencies already pressed by job insecurities express visceral resistance to reformation of habitual practices with uncertain consequences for them in the future. I very much appreciate the attention to this issue by Chakrabarty--and now adopting the stance of the demanding reviewer—-I want to hear more. Disgust is ineliminable from life, but its cultural foci and intensities can be retrained by tactical means.

 
Fourth, classical notions of “the political”, particularly in western thought--but perhaps not only there—-prove to be insufficient to the obdurate challenges of the Anthropocene today. Arendt’s notion, for example, presupposes the earth as a rather stable background allowing a territorially privileged plurality of human beings to spawn a creative result under carefully crafted conditions. It does not speak closely to the volatility of planetary processes, both in themselves and in relation to triggers pulled by the history of capitalist CO2 and methane emissions. Schmitt, to me, is worse, with his drives to intensify friend/enemy conflicts in pursuit of a fascist nation compromising his late attention to the Nomos of the earth. Many others also spawn images of the political that fail to cope with the spatial scales and temporal multiplicities of the Anthropocene. I call them sociocentric.

So, four themes in Chakrabarty to be taken on board by those who seek to respond to the profound, urgent, and asymmetrical challenges of Anthropocene acceleration. They are enough to make us dizzy. And perhaps they provide hints about some sources of climate denialism and casualism today. Denialism is intense refusal to admit publicly that human induced rapid climate change is real, even when your own experience suggests it to be so. The doubling is what gives the phenomenon its intensity. It is anchored in a visceral fear of how you and your constituency would fare if the radical adjustments proposed are undertaken. That response is bolstered in some evangelical circles by insisting it is a sin against God’s cosmic governance to assert that a human civilization could alter nature in this way; it is intensified by high roller capitalist elites in a demand to project a system of profit and extreme inequality into the future anchored in fossil extraction, immense profits, and mastery of nature—-a combination the rollers themselves suspect to be unsustainable. These two spiritualities come together in the United States, at least, in an evangelical/neoliberal resonance machine that blocks every effort to respond to the Anthropocene.

Climate casualists, on the other hand, acknowledge climate change, but the acknowledgement does not sink deeply into the cultural register of belief and orientations to action. They find the topic depressing and move on quickly. Climate casualists are what Nietzsche might call passive nihilists: they acknowledge on the register of refined belief the Anthropocene; but that acknowledgement is immobilized by a series of old remnants lodged on the visceral register of cultural habit. The remnants form conceptually crude and affectively intense pre-orientations to action.

So, four invaluable themes by Chakrabarty: the volatile relations of the global and the planetary; the penetration of ends attached to a non-capitalist civilization of productivity in some post-colonial theories; the severe limits of classical notions of the political; and the role in these debates and struggles of the visceral register of cultural life.

I would now like to propose two possible augmentations to the analysis by Chakrabarty of the contemporary condition.

First, sprinkled throughout this text are various references to the insufficiency of contending models of time and temporality to encounters with the bumpy relations between the global and the planetary. The idea, I think, is not only a dominant modern model of time is wrong, but that classical and modern debates about time also need to be reworked. There are for instance, cyclical views of time found in the western geologies of Buffon and others, as well as variants in several nonwestern regions. There are, as well, linear images of time, sometimes linked to tendencies toward progress but not always so. Within this last domain there are those such as Descartes, Newton and Einstein who focus on time as a series of disparate instants and those such as Bergson and Whitehead who do or can claim human experiences of duration give us indispensable clues, too, about viral temporalities, monsoon temporalities, ocean conveyor temporalities, glacier temporalities, and so on. The latter, however, in ways that recall Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, tend to project the automatic tendency of these diverse temporalities to harmonize over the long term, and that, therefore, that they are predisposed in the last instance to human well-being.

Theorists such as Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze, Stephen Gould, and I, however, try to excavate and rework this last assumption. We appreciate clock time—-extending from the time of your morning shower and first class to the deep time of the earth now measured at around 4.5 billion years. Tick, tock, tick, tock. We experience duration. And we also, in ways that do not contradict the first experiences, add what might be called evental time to the list. Evental time periodically interrupts both cyclical and linear temporalities. It can interrupt cycles such as the seasons, the eleven year cycle of sunspot variations, or even changes in the wobble of the earth. And it can interrupt the very long period of advance in dinosaur dominance or the much shorter period of dominance by extractive capitalism. An event, so conceived, occurs when an unexpected happening transforms future expectations and extrapolations. Or when many freeze because they refuse to allow such turns to elicit new extrapolations, ethical stances and political efforts. Evental time turns anticipatory time.

Such turning events are not always unpredictable in principle. They might sometimes merely stand outside operative horizons of attention, as that recent double viral crossing did in Wuhan. Other events may be, however, either because they exceed current scientific capacities to explain tipping points or because they involve real moments of creativity in the world. These are interruptions in the commonly projected future of, say, capitalism, seasons, climate, glacier flows or drought zones, occasioned by intersections between two or more temporalities moving on different vectors, speeds and capacities. A few examples may be pertinent.

When the orbit of the earth intersected with another planet moving on a different pattern perhaps 4.1 billion years ago, the moon was formed and the density of the planet’s mantle became imbalanced. Theia, some geologists now believe, also deposited “carbonaceous material” on the earth, from which oceans were later formed and life became possible. The jury is still out on that last claim, but it would be a huge turning event if true.

Another: About 250 million years ago in clock time eruptions in the Siberian flats heated the earth’s atmosphere; that warming event in turn probably released massive amounts of methane in Antarctica. The collision between three temporalities—-i.e., an event--probably set off the biggest mass extinction of life on earth, turning the course of future species evolution.

About 12,700 years ago, the ocean conveyor system, set on a cyclical temporality that had been in play for a few million years, collided with other flows and was brought to a sudden stop, creating a new ice age.

About 124 years ago (1897-99) seasonal monsoons (cyclical time) were interrupted over large parts of Indian, African and Asian regions. The interruption seemed to follow an intensification of El-Ninos over the Pacific and a shift in the intensity and absorbing capacity of western trade winds. These results were followed by incredible neglect by the British Empire of the famines that resulted. Four intersecting temporalities.

The above sampling is highly incomplete. But an event may now emerge as the confluence of two or more temporalities—-the temporalities can be civilizational, planetary or both—-turning a previously projected course to the future. This all may suggest that both cyclical and linear/progressive images of time need amendment. Both can be interrupted by evental time at surprising junctures. The Anthropocene is one of those junctures.

Finally, it may be timely to speak more sharply to the issue of political activism during the Anthropocene. Chakrabarty may think, I don’t know, that there are so many cultural assumptions to rethink that this issue should be put on hold for a while. However, the truth in that point deflates a second truth: the high probability that “we” have only six or seven years to act militantly before the cascading effects of the Anthropocene overwhelm several regions, setting into motion new refugee flows, wars, civil wars, and dangerous fascist reactions by old capitalist states. So, it is now urgent to pursue a set of improbable necessities within and across several regions, improbable because so many capitalist, theological, and cultural forces resist them; necessary because of the urgency of time.

As Chakrabarty knows above all there is no simple “we” with respect to cross regional citizen strategies to put pressure on states and regions. Variations of circumstance are far too radical for that. To get the ball rolling, then, I will review thoughts about a politics of swarming to be initiated within and across old capitalist states, inviting others to extend and/or modify these themes with respect to other regions.

You move, first, through a variety of role experiments with others at work, your household, your locality, your temple, your university, etc. Such interventions both change collective practices modestly, and they work on the visceral register of culture to prepare activists for more expansive actions later. Role experiments thus perform double duty. Changes in consumption, recycling, composting, invitations to speakers at your temple or school, curriculum, establishing institutional beacons of carbon neutrality, etc. are key here. Following that, you intensify participation in elections and public demonstrations, where this is possible. And, finally, building on those energies already in play you initiate cross-regional general strikes to challenge existing practices of production and consumption now in place in old capitalist states. Such strikes will involve withdrawal from work, radical reductions of consumption by those able to do so for a period of time, and intensive lobbying of state, temple, corporate, and educational institutions. The cross-regional character of such actions would impose pressure on old capitalist states from the inside and outside at the same time. I pose such a set of improbable necessities, again, in part to encourage others to push other proposals, amid the unwillingness of many states, regions, churches, and corporations to do act. Silence on the issue is not an option. Neither is mere critique of this or that positive strategic proposal. Alternative positivities are needed, given the urgency of time…

Part of the challenge to the global and the planetary during acceleration of the Anthropocene is to devise and enact political strategies that outstrip an old set insufficient to this era. For that reason, and others already noted, I appreciate the food for thought offered by this timely book.

Civility Is For Losers

Bonnie Honig
Brown University
Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair

Grab ‘em by the pussy. They don’t resist. Well most of them don’t, anyway. Most give in; maybe it seems easier than fighting. Or they think it’s just the cost of doing business. “Here we go…” – they think. “Here we go!” he thinks, closing in for the kill. Will this one yield? Most do, or perhaps it is just many who do. Or maybe just a few (he does exaggerate). Why do they yield? They are polite, conflict avoidant, maybe a bit blinded by celebrity. They are also thrown off, taken aback by his complete abandonment of the usual rules. Why bother with consent when you can get compliance? Just get what you want. Reach over, she is right there, next to you on the plane, in your office, in the dressing room. There! For the TAKING!


Lie, promise things you know you won’t deliver, bluster, tell them how rich you are, say anything, do anything: whatever it takes. What if she says no? she won’t say no! and if she does, so what? Who will know? Just say you tossed her first! Or call her a liar. Or, better: Demand an apology from her! Ha! That’ll teach her. Most of ‘em let you, anyway. But what if later they complain? then what? No problem: throw some money at ‘em. "Here, don’t say I never gave you anything." "What? You think that was rude? I was just JOKING! Can’t you people take a joke?"

If that last paragraph was a bumper sticker, it would read: “Civility is for losers.” That’s us.

The owner of the Red Hen restaurant seems to be everything the President is not: serious, polite, and well-intentioned. She risked her business out of respect for her workers who, like most restaurant workers, are among those on the presidential hit list. The restaurant business, as Anthony Bourdain made plain, is particularly hospitable to non-conforming people. Perhaps it is the melee of the kitchen that provides an environment in which men – it is mostly men -- who don’t fit elsewhere, find a niche and maybe even thrive. Informed that the President’s Press Secretary was dining in her restaurant this week, The Red Hen’s owner consulted her employees, she did not tell them what to do, and then she represented them, she did not betray them. She took the press secretary outside, presumably to save her embarrassment in front of her friends, and to avoid a scene. “I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” the Red Hen’s Stephanie Wilkinson said later. The desire to avoid a scene is often what leads to compliance. Not this time. Out on the porch, Wilkinson explained the press secretary would not be served dinner, then refused her money, and asked her to leave. The Press Secretary left (note: if you refuse, THEY may comply!).

 The story came out. The Press Secretary preened her moral superiority and said that when asked, she “politely left.” As for the owner of the Red Hen? “Her actions,” Sanders said, “say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.” This last statement alone beggars all belief given the almost daily barrage of snide prevarication from the podium. But beggaring belief is surely the point. If Sanders and her boss could, they would make beggars of us all.

 In a decent world, Stephanie Wilkinson’s decency would shine like a beacon. Sarah Sanders was right (even a broken clock is right twice a day): “Her actions,” Sanders said, “say far more about her than about me.” Wilkinson did not yell “fascist,” she did not tweet out the Press Secretary’s whereabouts and encourage a crowd to come protest her, she did not tape their dinner conversation. These are all tactics others might have employed, and all of them are defensible. But Wilkinson found her own way: she toed the line she could not cross, and she did so with civility. It seems to have done her no good. It has done her a world of good. It has done the world good. Yes, she has now resigned her position as executive director of the downtown business association, part of the fallout of her stumble into public life. And her business is attacked by Trump and his Press Secretary. Their aim is to raise the costs of protest and discourage others from such principled action. If no one is protesting, that must mean there is nothing to protest! Just like when an NDA secures a woman’s silence, and the conclusion we are told to accept is that the assault must have not happened. But Maxine Waters, who has known from Day One who and what we are dealing with here, congratulated Wilkinson, and called for more like her to step up. Waters called on all of us. Take courage from this example, she is saying. Take ‘em out on the porch. Don’t let it be business as usual. Don’t just let it go. And now it is Waters, not the pussy- grabber, but the one who dares to call him what he is, who is told she should apologize.

The audacity of civility. Power loves to police the tone of those who challenge it. To be sure, the tone is not the only thing policed. A man who has always taken what he wants without asking now has at his behest the forces of police, military, and the Supreme Court. With the full power of the US government, his game is to see how far he can go. Our obligation is to stop him. No one tactic will do. (VOTE!) No one else will do it. One at a time and all together is the only way forward.

 Stephanie Wilkinson has shone a light. Let us show we know the power of the shining beacon and have faith in the rewards of walking in its path: When Muhammad Ali was asked whether he regretted his draft refusal, given what it cost him (titles and money lost while he was effectively banned from the sport), he said: “I would like to say to those of the press and those of the people who think that I lost so much … I would like to say that I did not lose a thing up until this very moment, I haven’t lost one thing,” he said. “I have gained a lot. Number one, I have gained a peace of mind. I have gained a peace of heart.”

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Populism or Fascism?

William E. Connolly
Author, Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy Under Trumpism (2017) and Facing the Planetary... (2017)

In his impressive 1944 book, The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi reviews how a series of Fascist movements erupted in Europe, the United States and elsewhere after the meltdown of market capitalism in 1929 known as the Great Depression. Sure, Italian fascism preceded that collapse, but its virulence increased after the Depression, and it was joined by the vitalization of similar movements. Some succeeded, crushing communism and social democracy, as they introduced a version of corporate capital tied to Fascist governance. Others failed, largely because of democratic movements trending toward social democracy. One lesson from this cross-regional cluster of movements, Polanyi claimed, is that Fascist movements are not simply reducible to the internal dynamics of a single regime.

 Pressures to Fascism flow from a volatile conjunction of internal and external forces. Internal discontents in Germany after its total defeat in World War I were joined to the devastating cross-regional effects of the Great Depression on middle and working classes. German Nazism became the most virulent mode of Fascism, joining intense racial nationalism, antisemitism, attacks on "slavs", Romani, gays, communists and social democrats to initiation of World War II and the utter horror of Death camps. But other Fascist movements also arose in countries such as the United States (Father Coughlin had a radio following of 30 million), Norway, France, England, Sweden, Hungary, Holland, Finland and Japan. The horror of German Nazism, indeed, can distract attention from how the other movements, too, were driven by both internal and external dynamics.
 
 It is pertinent to see how the deregulated precursors to more recent versions of neoliberalism ushered in the Great Depression. But market ideologues soon pretended, with Hayek taking the lead, that it is Keynesian policies that place society on “the road to serfdom”. Polanyi was amused by Hayek’s denial of marketeer responsibility for the Great Depression. He therefore felt confident that Hayekism would never return to a position of prominence in western democracies. He was ohhh so wrong on that last point. But his recognition of general sources of the first wave of Fascist movements and our recent experience do suggest that the cross-regional victories of neoliberalism, with its drives to periodic crisis, austerity programs, and attacks on worker security, readily establish preconditions for Fascistic eruptions.

 Today, you might say, new dislocations have emerged to challenge several democracies. The escalation of refugee pressures has been deployed to incite racism in several countries. Job insecurities and stagnating wages, generated by the hegemony of neoliberal regimes and the decline of labor movements, exacerbate these pressures. The droughts in Syria, the Sub-Sahara, and Latin America, linked in part to galloping climate change, already help to spawn civil wars and the flows of desperate refugees. They also pull American constituencies, drawn to the myth of a golden age when coal, oil, gas, massive highway projects, and automobility were kings, to leaders who blame their troubles on immigration, racial integration, trade agreements, and ethnic pluralization. These constituencies become susceptible to false promises to return to a manufacturing era that gave them entitlements. Such developments vary significantly across regimes, of course, but variations are discernible in the United States, the UK, Poland, Italy, Hungary and Turkey. A series of local surges with cross-regional affinities. A new version of the world Polanyi charted for the 1930s.

What needs close attention today, however, is how several authoritative analyses replace the old designation of Fascist movements with that of “Populist” movements. The label Polanyi used to review multiple movements in the 1930s is now refused by many critics. Take, to cite merely one example, the new book by Levitsky and Ziblatt on How Democracies Die. “Populists are antiestablishment politicians—figures claiming to represent the voices of the people, wage war on what they depict as a corrupt and conspiratorial elite. Populists tend to deny the legitimacy of established parties…And they promise to bury the elite and return power to the people.” (p. 22)
 Levitsky and Ziblatt do capture aspects of the current crisis in democracy, attending to how the movements they decry undermine democratic norms. And they certainly realize that democracies can die. But they underplay the deeper sources of that erosion and focus too much on how party reform can restore “guardrails” of democratic governance. What, speaking more generally, is deficient about accounts couched as critiques of Populism?
  First, the reduction of the new movements to Populism tends to cover Left Populism and Right Populism under the same umbrella. That encourages the call for establishment guardrails to foreclose both movements from the Left and Right. But it can be argued--I do argue--that a focus on guardrails alone reproduces the conditions that created the crisis in the first place. It under plays how radical actions within universities, corporations, localities, and the state challenged ordinary party politics as it extended the pluralization of civic culture. And it ignores how the market fundamentalism of the neoliberal Right and the pluralizing politics of the cultural Left—while each resisted the other--caught many members of the white working and middle classes in a bind between them. That bind increased their job insecurities, produced wage stagnation, made it more difficult to send their kids to college in an economy where a high school education is not enough, and made them highly vulnerable to the debt and underwater mortgages spawned by neoliberal meltdowns. The bind even encouraged some within the liberal Left to characterize this constituency in disparaging terms it would find to be outrageous if they were applied to Blacks, women, Jews, Mexicans, Muslims or others. Think of the words white trash, hillbillies, and crackers for starters. The binds in which they are caught primed the “deplorables” to listen to the voices of aspirational Fascism.

Second--a related point--while deriding "populist" rhetoric on the Right, generic antipopulists also tend to deflate egalitarian, pluralizing and democratic rhetorical practices desperately needed to counteract the rhetoric of aspirational fascism today. Antipopulists sometimes act as if they want rule by democratic elites to be almost as automatic--once the election is over--as neoliberals pretend markets are when they are left free to rumble. Such an elective affinity between lovers of regular party rule and lovers of untrammeled markets is not too surprising; the two parties had already arranged a rocky marriage contract. What is urgently needed today, however, are democratic activists with rhetorical powers to both activate several minorities and inspire the higher angels of a larger faction of the white working and middle classes. The dispersed working class in fact has become a minority itself today. The leaders must call for radical changes that draw these constituencies closer together, rather than exacerbating divisions between them. More about that soon. They will do so in ways that repeatedly expose the Big Lie Scenarios of aspirational Fascism as they ground their own inspirations in evidence based claims. Think of the differences here between William Barber and Donald Trump. And, on another register, the differences between Hillary Clinton and Barber, with the former too crippled by her own neoliberalism to address real class issues of the day.

Beto O'Rourke and Veronica Escobar Lead March on Tent City

 Third, democracy does not consist merely of representation through open elections, compromises between governing elites, and consensus on guardrails. Representative democracy stands in creative tension with its indispensable double: creative social movements to open up new possibilities in the domains of worker entitlement, ethnic diversity, religious plurality, income egalitarianism, climate action, and gender diversity. The fact that some constituencies on that list have made precarious advances over the last few decades, while the working class has faced declining entitlements and growing insecurities, means that this second dimension of democracy must be widened again. Critics of generic "Populism" do not appreciate sufficiently the need for such social movements. Their one-dimensional definition of representative democracy—often joined to softness on a neoliberalism that demeans social movements even more belligerently—depreciates citizen activism as an essential ingredient of democracy. Such a combination of elite guardrails and softness on neoliberalism, however, promises to reproduce the condition the elites purport to fight against. That, indeed, is how we got here.

 Fourth, while the democratic Left might hope to win a Presidential election with an inspiring candidate, it cannot create large enough Congressional majorities unless it makes substantial inroads into the large fly-over zones between the two coasts. This, too, means that a larger segment of the dispersed white working class must be drawn again into its orbit. Entrenchment by the radical Right in small towns and rural districts--joined to a ruthless ideology and extreme gerrymandering--shows how the politics of stalemate deepens when a Democrat wins the White House. The politics of gridlock, however, is precisely the politics that attracts aggrieved low information voters to listen to definitive, ruthless incitement from authoritarian leaders. A cascade process is set into motion here. 

 Fifth, while ideologues of aspirational Fascism stoke white nationalism, a territorial Wall, fossil fuels, racism, and stories of a climate hoax to return to a golden 1950s era when an old manufacturing regime prevailed--it is nonetheless insufficient to use the language of racism and misogyny to oppose them. Those practices certainly must be identified and rooted out, and it is important to emphasize how the 1950s brought McCarthyism. But, it is now clear: in order to surmount racism and misogyny you must also support general policies to render the infrastructure of consumption more inclusive, to make public college tuition free, to protect low and middle income people from retrograde bankruptcy proceedings after a meltdown, to improve the legal power of labor unions, to reverse finance laws that allow the rich to steal elections, to build a sustainable power grid, to support universal health care, to protect worker retirements after a company closes, and to reduce the income discrepancy between the highest and lowest paid workers in each firm. Several of these proposals would provide more working and middle class people in many subject positions with better jobs and living conditions. But such proposals fall into categories that some pundits place under the label of Left Populism. Neglect or repudiation of such programs incites temptations by caught many in the binds described to tolerate or succumb to aspirational Fascism.

 Is it really wise to define virulent movements on the Right as carriers of aspirational Fascism? One reason it is wise to do so is that it allows us to draw selectively from energies conservative democrats and neoliberals now sink into a vague muddle called Populism. The change in labels additionally underlines how serious the danger from the Right is today. Aspirational Fascists already use Big Lies every day, conspire with hostile foreign powers to rig elections, make vicious attacks on the media as “enemies of the people”, instill racism, engage in minority voter suppression, advance militarism, threaten wars, assert the President to be a Sovereign above the law, strive to turn the Justice Department into a tool of elite gangsterism, make thinly denied appeals to vigilante groups, use the Presidency as a corrupt vehicle for a family business, demand unquestioning support from the courts, and support local police violence. They are already Fascist in both achievement and ambition.

GOP Nominee for Virginia Senate Seat Corey Stewart

What would they do if they succeeded even more on several fronts? They would become more oppressive yet in their use of the IRS, racism, intimidation of the media, corruption of courts, use of Reichstag temptations to mobilize the base, voter suppression, militarism, support of vigilantism, alliances with local police, and infiltration of the academy. They would define all adversaries to be "enemies of the people", as they winnow down what counts as "the people". They would transfigure democratic institutions into mechanisms of oppressive rule. They would deploy the separation of powers as a cover more than be restrained by it. What looked like a Populist movement to proponents of one dimensional democracy before it seized power would surface as Fascism if it consolidated power.

We already inhabit the era of aspirational Fascism, then. It is unwise to assume that the separation of powers and elite protection of old guardrails will suffice to defeat that movement. It may do so, but it is unwise to count on it alone without large doses of citizen activism. It is more wise to recall how a set of neoliberal Republicans-- so recently proud of free trade deals, originalist judges, the “rational” market, tax cuts for the rich, and dog whistles over overt racism--have slunk either into silence or toward ebullient Trumpism. The differences between them and Trump have been squeezed by complementary desires to mobilize a governing assemblage composed of rich donors, leading financial elites, white evangelicals, the white working and middle classes, Big Lie Scenarios, minority voter suppression, a territorial Wall, and a Fascist leader exempt from criticism, judicial action or legislative review. We live during a moment when a new crisis is apt to place democracy even more severely at risk. Citizens who love democracy may soon have to take to the streets, twitter mobilizations, town halls, and phone banks to force accountability from leaders who seek to evade it.

I am aware that a faction on the Left contends that democracy forms a thin varnish on top of capitalism. They exaggerate. Democracy and capitalism do chafe against each other; neoliberal capitalism places democracy under severe pressure; and a neoliberal/evangelical resonance machine places it under extreme pressure, as I diagnosed in Capitalism and Christianity, American Style in 2008. But, as Theodore Adorno found, after the “veneer” had been ripped off Weimar democracy, democracy had in fact been closer to a skin than to a veneer. Tearing it off created a bloody mess. The crisis of capitalism and democracy, in that instance, ushered in Fascism, when many communists had thought it would open the door to Communism. Capitalism with democracy provides footholds and handholds at many sites from which significant change can sometimes be pursued, including radical changes in the growth imperatives that both shape capitalism and threaten the future during the Anthropocene. Late modern capitalism without democracy, on the other hand, becomes Fascism. This is so because extra repression is needed to stifle constituencies accustomed to democratic citizenship. Such repression would find expression in numerous institutions--from localities, schools, churches, police departments, and corporations to governing state institutions of the day. It is thus unwise to wait for democracy to collapse in the hope of installing a new Kingdom of Heaven. That lesson has been taught before; aspirational Fascism teaches it again.

Thomas Dumm — The Election of Trump and the Constitution’s Original Sin

Joe Scarborough is productive.

Thomas Dumm
Amherst College

The immediate post-election normalization of the fascist white-nationalist klepto-capitalist president-elect Donald Trump has caused quite a bit of head-spinning among attentive observers of corporate news media over the past month. Progressive websites especially have noted repeatedly and with increasing distress that the meaning of this unexpected turn of events is that it signals a new form of an old tendency in American politics. The “new” part is an open embrace of white nationalism and authoritarianism by the incoming administration. But there has been no focus on the incipient fascism at work here. Indeed, from the day after the election, commentators such as Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” have declared that the term “fascism” should be retired, as it isn’t productive. The idea seems to be that if he is elected president, by definition he can’t be a fascist.

Readers of the Contemporary Condition have been treated to Bonnie Honig’s brilliant reading of this normalization process in her “Trump’s Upside Down” on November 14th. (Indeed, as I have been writing this post, I heard yet another reporter on MSNBC refer to “the white nationalist community.”) And there is no doubt that other contributors to CC have been prescient in reading Trump and the fascism he practices from early on in his campaign. (See my “Degraded Fascism, Nihilism, and Donald Trump” and “The End of Boehner” from the fall of 2015, and Bill Connolly and Steve Johnston’s numerous posts over the stretch of this election, dating from 2015.) I have greedily read numerous essays on such blog sites as The Huffington Post and Salon seeking confirmation of the fascism underlying what I have been reading, watching and listening to since the election, trying to fight the gas-lighting of cable news networks, which keep insisting that there is nothing to see here.

There is something else that has been normalized in this post-election period, largely because of a relative silence concerning it, that deserves deeper attention than it has so far received. That is the fact that in almost any representative democracy’s electoral system, Trump would have lost, and the Republican Party’s Congressional and Senate majorities would have been won by the Democratic Party. It has been noted repeatedly that Hillary Clinton received over two million more votes than did Donald Trump (as of this writing, 2.53 million more votes). Less widely noted is that, for the fourth consecutive election, more voters chose Democratic candidates for Congress and Senate than they did Republicans. In the past, such an outcome, in itself, even without the disastrous candidate who benefited from it, would have been treated as the most important part of the electoral story. But it hasn’t this time.

What’s going on? We all realize that the permanent and unchanging structure of the US Senate guarantees equal representation for all states in the senior body of Congress (the only provision in the Constitution that is not changeable is the guarantee of the permanent existence of the Senate – see Article V) and the gerrymandering of House districts has made the climb for Democrats to electoral success extraordinarily steep. But throughout the campaign, one of the false narratives in the national political media – hello Chuck Todd -- was that the Democrats enjoyed an Electoral College “lock.” Unnoticed, or unnoted, was that there was a systematic voter suppression campaign going on that focused on precisely the key states that eventually went to Trump. North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan all had in place effective voter registration laws restricting minority voting. This suppression was enabled by the Supreme Court, which because of continued unequal representation in elections, has been chosen predominately by Republican presidents over recent decades. In other words, the very structure of political representation in the United States is quasi-apartheid in character. But we aren’t supposed to say such rude things.

This is the fifth time in American history that the winner of the popular vote has been denied the Electoral College win. In those five elections, it was the generally the Right that won. The conservative but reform-minded Democratic governor of New York Samuel Tilden’s loss in the notorious election of 1876 was a pyrrhic victory for the Republicans, as it resulted in the devil’s bargain that ended Reconstruction, a huge win for the Right. And the elections of George W. Bush and Donald Trump can be seen as twin triumphs of right-wing minorities. In the election of 1824, John Quincy Adams defeated the populist Andrew Jackson, though he lost the popular vote by what still is the largest percentage in American history, thus leading to the founding of the modern Democratic party. The election of William Henry Harrison over Grover Cleveland in 1888 could be interpreted as the right winning over the left, though the issues in that election didn’t line up in a sense we would recognize contemporarily.

What does this brief excursus through electoral history suggest for us? In two of the past five elections -- though if one squints closely at the returns from Ohio in 2004, one might conclude that John Kerry was robbed of the electoral votes of that state, and could have become a minority Democratic president had electoral college justice prevailed – right-wing minorities have taken power against the wishes of those who cast the most votes, and did so against them. (Relevant details.) 

Most commentators, when criticizing the Electoral College, note two things – first, that by the Constitution’s use of the formula “number of representatives based on population plus two Senators in each state” there is a distortive effect which results in small states attaining inordinate power, compared to larger states (for example). Others note that since almost all states have adopted the winner-take-all formula, resulting in every electoral college vote going to the person who gets the most votes, large majorities in states such as New York and California, on the Democratic side, and Texas, for instance, on the Republican side, don’t have the same representative power that tiny majorities in swing states have.

"This map shows each state re-sized in proportion to the relative influence of the individual voters who live there. The numbers indicate the total delegates to the Electoral College from each state, and how many eligible voters a single delegate from each state represents." (source)

But for all of the discussion of the distortive effects of the Electoral College, none of our talking heads or even “responsible journalists,” go back to the origins of its existence, or if they do so, they deflect, that is, they don’t go into the sordid roots of the compromise that led to this system of representation. For instance, in the November 21, 2016 issue of the NY Times, “The Upshot” notes “the rural vote’s disproportionate slice of power,” that is a consequence of the Electoral College, but goes on to discuss Thomas Jefferson’s (highly romanticized) vision of yeoman farmers.

While commentators seem compelled to revert to the most innocuous narrative of what was an often savagely fought debate, the heart of the Connecticut Compromise, or the Great Compromise of 1787 as it came to be called, which led to the establishment of the Senate and the Electoral College, had to do far less with the elevation of yeoman farmers and much more to do with the brute political influence of the slaveholding delegations of the Southern states at the constitutional convention. Contemporary discussions of the question of this compromise largely focus on the difference between large states and small states and their suspicions of each other – and since Virginia was a large state, and North and South Carolina, for instance, while smaller states, were predicted at the time to be likely to grow to be large – the decision to create a Senate has been seen as a way of protecting small states’ sovereignty from being overwhelmed by the populations of the larger states.

But there were two sorts of large states in play. One sort was slave-holding, the other was not. Simply put, without the Connecticut Compromise, the southern states were planning to walk away from the convention, which would have led to the dissolution of the United States. The major part of the Connecticut Compromise, aside from the creation of the Senate, was the notorious 3/5ths compromise concerning how slaves were to be counted, which was to determine the population of states for purposes of representation using the “all other persons” clause. Hence the Constitution actually was making those Southern slaveholding states large for purposes of the census, expanding the power of whites on the very bodies of black slaves. Eventually, once cotton took hold as a major crop, this compromise would result in states like Mississippi and Louisiana practically doubling their representation on the basis of their slave population.

This electoral system once more has served the right -- as it (almost) always has, given its systemic bias -- and just when we democrats think we may have overcome its most pernicious effects, it comes back and bites us in the ass. Following his election even the ignoramus Trump suggested on Twitter that some sort of reform of the Electoral College to reflect the will of the majority might be in order. Of course, he advocated this until someone – Kelly Anne Conway? -- must have whispered in his ear that he won precisely because the Electoral College doesn’t reflect that will. So he reversed course, on Twitter again praising the genius of what he had called throughout the campaign a “rigged system.” It is no accident that “post-truth” was recently designated the word of the year for 2016.

This is the sordid compromise that has permanently haunted the Constitution of the United States, and the undemocratic system of representation that “we, the people” have been subjected to for over two centuries. It is rooted in the explicit and then the tacit acceptance of the hideous system of chattel slavery, and it has never succeeded in overcoming that original sin, operating as a drag on all attempts to attain simple justice. That is because the Constitution is, by design, unequal in its representational system. All of the Constitutional lawyers in the world can’t wash their hands of the stain of it. This constitution, effusively praised by its promoters, worshipped by so many as our secular religion, and apologized for by generations of lawyers over the course of two hundred some years, needs, more desperately than ever, to be scrapped.

Interestingly enough, the fact that the Republicans now control 33 states at this point puts them one state short of being able to call for a Constitutional convention. Perhaps they will, but it is not likely, given how well the current system suits their purposes. But this is the traditional blackmail of the Constitution. Those who dominate always get to threaten something worse. (The only time their bluff was called, there was a Civil War, and even a Civil War was a two steps forward, one step back sort of deal.) Accept this constitution, they seem to say, or we will replace it with something even worse. Accept this Constitution, or we will shoot this dog.

Adam Culver — Fascism at the Door

Adam Culver, Makerere University

Studying the fascist exercise of power, therefore, is not simply a matter of laying out the dictator’s will… It means examining the never-ending tensions within fascist regimes among the leader, his party, the state, and traditional holders of social, economic, political, or cultural power. This reality has produced an influential interpretation of fascist governance as “polyocracy,” or rule by multiple relatively autonomous power centers, in unending rivalry and tension with each other. In polyocracy the famous “leadership principle” cascades down through the social and political pyramid, creating a host of petty Führers and Duces in a state of Hobbesian war of all against all.

—Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (126-7)

Last Friday afternoon (Nov.11th), still reeling from the outcome of the election, I did what many of my friends and colleagues did in the days following the election: I went to class and had a somber conversation with my students about Donald Trump and the rise of white nationalism, xenophobia, and authoritarian populism in the United States. The tone and tenor of the conversation were shaped by a mixture of desperation and defiance as my students grappled with the various causal factors at work in Trump’s electoral victory—economic displacement, misogyny, alienation, xenophobia, nihilism, and, yes, racism—and how to best respond to these reactive forces. In what ways have white liberals been complicit in the ascendance of Trumpism? How should we respond to public acts of intimidation, harassment, and violence directed at those who have been vilified by Trump and his accomplices? How can those of us who are not yet under immediate threat support and stand in solidarity with the increasingly large number of those who are? What kinds of work must white people undertake to challenge racism and hatred in their own families and communities? How might we begin imagining alternative futures and forging new solidarities? 

These questions are of course extremely difficult, as was our conversation, which necessarily forced us to confront much we would rather avoid. Although they probably already knew as much, I warned my students that things are likely to get much worse and that they must resist the temptation to normalize Trump, oppose appeals for accommodation, and refuse to seek common ground with white supremacy in the misguided belief that in doing so they might mitigate the evil it represents. We spoke about the importance of community involvement, collective action (including protest), and political advocacy. Above all I urged them to love each other, to read, to organize, and to continue making art. I believe fascism is at the door, but I left the room that day fortified with what Du Bois once called “a hope not hopeless but unhopeful.” My students seem determined to confront the fascist lurking both within and without, and to do so with passion, resolve, and courage—not because success on a macro-political level is likely to follow but because this is the only way of remaining human, of being able to live with themselves and find one another in the dark times that await. 

Contrary to my normal practice, I did not prepare much material for class that day. For me, at least, the speed and magnitude of events, combined with the visceral revulsion I experience every time I hear or see Trump speak, has made these days disorienting, inducing a kind of vertigo as I try to keep track of events without being pulled apart by them. Besides, I knew that once we began talking, whatever notes I had prepared would not receive even a moment’s glance. But sometime during the early morning hours of Friday I happened to recall an old handout—“The Anatomy of Fascism,” which I had prepared nearly a decade prior as a TA for Race and Racism in Comparative Perspective—and decided to use it again. I pulled up the file, made one change—adding the United States to the list of countries where fascist movements had come to power—and printed enough copies for my students. 

The handout is relatively simple and straightforward; drawing from Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism, it outlines 7 key characteristics of fascist regimes and rule:

1) Mobilization of segments of working class populations not affiliated with organized labor unions or political parties. Militarization of daily life and valorization of violence.

2) The development of parallel institutions and organizations that engage in activities of state, particularly paramilitary and police services. The creation of the ‘dual state.’

3) Coalitions between conservative, far right and in several cases, center right political parties and tendencies.

4) Forcible removal of sources of political opposition, particularly amongst left and far left tendencies, and eventually liberal/centrist political tendencies and parties.

5) Central role of ideology as an instrument of rule and mass mobilization. The aesthetization of violence. See, for example, the films of Leni Riefenstahl, such as Olympia and Triumph of the Will

6) Calls for the “renewal” of society, which often entails identifying an “enemy within” (e.g. the Jew, the Muslim, the immigrant, the non-Aryan, the black, and other marginalized populations). The enemy within is often further marginalized, in concert with a program of expulsion, liquidation and terrorism. Renewal often involves a project of racial/ethnic cleansing, attached to a romantic nostalgia for a supposedly pure past. Renewal also often attached to a program of imperial expansion.

7) A love-hate relationship to capitalism and industrialization. Creation of an agrarian myth while emphasizing industrial production. See, for example, Werner Sombart’s The Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911)

Reading through this list with my students, it did not take long for us to conclude that almost all of these characteristics are either already in evidence (e.g., promises of national renewal, identification of internal enemies, the valorization of violence, etc.) or discernable on the not-too-distant horizon (as seems to be the case, for example, with the forcible removal of sources of political opposition, calls for which now extend beyond the vitriolic chants of “lock her up”). The essential kernel of Trumpism is its promise to reassert the supremacy of a white, Christian identity at the spiritual-political center of the nation, and much of its affective force and appeal derives from the ferocity with which it promotes an all-too-fragile whiteness through the denigration of various racialized others. Indeed, Trump’s electoral victory was followed by a dramatic increase in incidents of racist and xenophobic harassment and intimidation across the country—the Southern Poverty Law Center collected 437 reports of such incidents between Wednesday November 9th, the day after the election, and the morning of Monday, November 14th. Such incidents are likely to increase and intensify as the affective flows that connect Trump and his supporters reverberate with other exclusionary social formations and practices in a generalized spirit of bellicosity and will to revenge against vulnerable and marginalized constituencies who are blamed for depriving white Americans of “their historic role to ‘make America great again.’”

To date, Trumpism has demonstrated a commitment to propagating the exclusionary nationalism, militarism, white supremacy, romantic nostalgia for a mythic past, and contempt for constitutional democracy that are the hallmarks of fascist movements past and present. Until it assumes power in January, however, we cannot be sure if it will pursue other characteristic features and practices of fascist rule, particularly the creation of “parallel institutions” and the “dual state” (see #2 above). But the early signs do not look good. The existence of a pro-Trump faction within the FBI is deeply disconcerting, as are key developments in Trump’s presidential transition—especially the appointment of Steve Bannon as Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Bannon is an anti-Semitic, Islamaphobic, misogynistic, white nationalist, bigot who presided over the alt-right white supremacist online cesspool Breitbart News before taking a leave from the company in August to become the C.E.O. of Trump’s presidential campaign. Bannon’s selection further indicates (as if more evidence were needed) that a virulent white supremacist ideology will play a central role in shaping Trump’s presidency. But it also indicates that Trump may seek to exercise power through a set of semi-formalized arrangements with characteristics that are analogous to the parallel institutions and dual-state structures that have been crucial to many a fascist regime and totalitarian state. The conjunction of these spiritual, ideological, and political elements and their coronation in a Trump presidency signals that fascism is at the door. 

This claim may perhaps sound implausible to those who simply don’t (or can’t) believe that Trump really means what he says when he calls Mexicans rapists, promises to build a Wall between the U.S. and Mexico, proposes temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the country, pledges to forcibly expel millions of undocumented immigrants, advocates ending birth-right citizenship, threatens to have his political opponents imprisoned, rejects the need for a free press and the right to protest, and so on. But we have no reason whatsoever to presume that these do not represent his political intentions, whatever his personal views may be. Americans (and not just Americans) have been perhaps too well trained in a school of political cynicism that says: all politicians lie and so we shouldn’t take what they say too seriously. “But campaigns offer a surprisingly accurate preview of Presidencies,” and I am not aware of many historical examples of autocratic populists becoming more democratic and tolerant of dissent after coming to power. The point is not that Trump will actually build a Big Wall—even many of his supporters doubt that he will do so—but rather that Trump will continue to harness a white supremacist ideal to dangerous ends. 

Nor would it be wise to place our faith in America’s political institutions to successfully neutralize Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. Yes, democratic institutions in the U.S. are stronger and have deeper roots than in countries like the Poland, Turkey, and Russia where autocratic leaders have centralized power and systematically undermined or dismantled constitutional rights and democratic institutions. But most congressional Republicans have already shown that they are not up to task of “checking” President Trump, as witnessed by their response to the Bannon appointment, which was met with little more than a collective shrug. (A recent article in Slate captures the danger quite well: “Republicans Rolled Over for Steve Bannon. They’ll Roll Over When He Comes for You, Too”). On the whole, congressional Republicans and party leaders seem perfectly willing to accept the appointment of a white nationalist who peddles in anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and Islamaphobic rhetoric as Trump’s top adviser so long as Trump plays nice. One shudders to think what else they will be willing to accept once their legislative agenda is on the line. In any case, this points to a perhaps more fundamental issue at hand, which “is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution.” Democracy is far more fragile than many Americans believe, and we should not let the longevity of democratic institutions and the unbroken tradition of the peaceful transfer of power in this country delude us into thinking that our institutions alone will safeguard our liberty. On the contrary, we will need to defend our democratic institutions against the onslaughts and abuses of power that are likely to come their way. 

Trump’s selection of Bannon, who recently boasted of turning Breitbart Media into the platform for the alt-right white supremacist movement, as his chief strategist and senior advisor is one of the latest and most troubling indicators that Trump’s presidency will be anything but ordinary. Indeed, a man who only a few years ago described himself as a “Leninist” whose goal was to “destroy the state” and “bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment,” now finds himself at the center of the state-apparatus, jockeying with the establishment for power! In 2014 Bannon boasted of a “global tea party movement,” by which he means a global populist-nationalist movement, and lauded Great Britain’s UKIP and France’s National Front for being at its forefront. Given his essential role in championing an “anti-establishment” ethno-nationalist chauvinism, it is unsurprising that his selection was met by unanimous praise from leading voices on the far-right, including Rocky Suhayda, chairman of the American Nazi Party, and David Duke, who enthusiastically praised Trump’s decision as “excellent” and suggested that Bannon might occupy the most important position in the White House staff: “You have an individual, Mr. Bannon, who's basically creating the ideological aspects of where we're going. And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government.” Let that sink in for a moment… 

“The elevation of Bannon to a powerful position in the White House is an epochal event in American politics, one that has been condemned by the N.A.A.C.P., the A.D.L., and many Democratic leaders, including Harry Reid,” who through his spokesman warned that Bannon’s appointment “signals that White Supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump’s White House.” And yet if you glanced at a major newspaper on Monday morning after Sunday’s announcement, chances are you would not get the impression that there is a serious crisis in the republic. The joint selection of Bannon as the president’s top advisor and Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC and consummate Washington Insider, as Trump’s chief of staff, was initially depicted as an ordinary political event by many media outlets. Priebus was portrayed as “a reassuring presence to establishment Republicans,” while a whole host of euphemisms were deployed to describe Bannon—“ally” and “loyalist” (USA Today), “outsider” (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal), and “firebrand” (New York Times, which at least at least also identified him as an “extremist”). Such evasions contribute to the normalization of white supremacist ideology and foster an environment in which Trump can continue to appoint extremists to important position of power in the White House, a process that has continued apace as I write this with the selections of Sessions, Pompeo, and Flynn.

In previous administrations, all presidential staff, including all political advisors, reported to the chief of staff. But this will no longer be the case: according to Trump’s transition team, Priebus and Bannon will be “equal partners,” an unusual arrangement almost certain to create “rival centers of power in the Trump White House.” This could very well have serious implications for how Trump exercises power from the White House/Trump Tower. Bannon will report directly to the president and presumably oversee a set of operations that function in parallel to the structures overseen by Priebus, with each managing and cultivating very different Trumpism constituencies. Will Priebus be a moderating force capable of limiting the influence of Bannon’s white nationalist ideology on Trump’s presidency? Perhaps. But it is already clear that one of Priebus’s duties will be to defend and provide ideological cover for Bannon, as he has been doing this past week. Moreover, every fascist regime has its Priebuses—i.e., traditional conservative politicians who try to preserve parts of the status quo and limit the dynamism of the fascist movement, but who usually get swept up in its currents themselves. Fascism always depends on “traditional leaders to open the gate,” Paxton explains, and thus presupposes “some degree, at least, of obligatory power sharing with the preexisting conservative establishment… Consequently, we have never known an ideologically pure fascist regime” (119). Within fascist regimes, conservatives urge a more cautious approach and advocate for more traditional forms of authoritarianism, while “fascists pull forward toward dynamic, leveling, populist dictatorship…” (120). Often this tension is resolved when party zealots “bypass the conservative power bases with ‘parallel structures’” (120-121). Something analogous to this seems to be underway in the organization of Trump’s White House staff. 

Paxton suggests that we can begin to grasp the basic dynamics at work in the creation of parallel institutions in fascist regimes by drawing upon Ernst Fraenkel’s description of Nazi Germany as a “dual state” containing a “normative state” based on constitutional authority, the rule of law, and the traditional civil service, which competed for power with a “prerogative state” formed by the party’s parallel organizations.

According to Fraenkel’s model of Nazi governance, the “normative” segment of a fascist regime continued to apply the law according to due process, and officials in that sector were recruited and promoted according to bureaucratic norms of competence and seniority. In the “prerogative” sector, by contrast, no rules applied except the whim of the ruler, the gratification of party militants, and the supposed “destiny” of the Volk, the razza, or other “chosen people.” The normative state and the prerogative state coexisted in conflict-ridden but more or less workmanlike cooperation, giving the regime its bizarre mixture of legalism and arbitrary violence. (121)

For Paxton the dual state image is incomplete because it is not sufficiently attuned to the importance of conflict between the fascist leader (Trump) and his party (the alt-right white supremacist movement), and it does not account for “elements outside the state” that “also participate in the tug-of-war for power within fascist regimes” (122). We might also add that it does not attend to the components of a fascist personality or to the spiritual dimensions of fascist assemblages. 

But Fraenkel’s account was also a “fruitful one” (121), one that helps us see how fascist regimes seek to manage the tensions between extremism and conservatism—promoting exclusionary sentiments and far-right policies while preserving public order and the allegiance of their conservative allies—through the duplication of traditional power centers by parallel party organizations and how the struggle for power between the ‘normative’ and ‘prerogative’ segments within each fascist regime conditions its character and their effects. This is what makes the establishment in the White House/Trump Tower of a duplicate power center dedicated to advancing the agenda of the alt-right white supremacy so dangerous. The National Review recently wished to remind its readers that “Steve Bannon is not Josef Goebbels.” Fine, but he doesn’t have to be: Steve Bannon is terrifying enough as himself. 

The greatest political danger a Trump presidency represents is therefore not the rollback of Obama’s legacy and the progressive policy agenda—though this is certainly something to struggle fiercely against. The greatest danger involves the reorganization of state power itself—regime change. We must do everything in our power to oppose not only the fascist policies of a Trump presidency but also the emergence of a fascist regime itself. Such an outcome may seem outlandish to some, but we live in outlandish times.