A New Political Agenda
Being anti-fascist isn't enough
Monday, June 2nd
2/30
From the meditations of The Pale Metaphysician
Today I want to write about the horrible political schema (see: ideology) sweeping the developed world. It goes by many names today, many in an effort to “sane wash”1 what we’re witnessing, such as “Trumpism,” the “far-right,” and my personal favorite, “soft fascism,” which I first saw coined by Slavoj Zizek. Personally, I’m ok with just calling it as it is: fascism. If it talks like a fascist, walks like a fascist, salutes like a fascist …
“But E. Trabitz!” you, the worried reader, may exclaim, “It’s only your second day! Are you really going to jump into something so controversial as contemporary politics and fascism off rip?” Yes! I am!
Fascism is nothing new, obviously. Even post-WWII there were fascist parties floating around, but always on the fringes of acceptable society and certainly never as a serious political force; that is, of course, until recently. Answering why/how these parties broke back into the mainstream is for another time, another kind of post perhaps, because I want to talk about a phenomenon ancillary to the fascist movements sweeping the globe:2 the monumental shift right3 of the Overton Window currently taking place. Ideas that were laughable, even unfathomable, not 10 years ago are now not only being considered but are official White House policy. Ideas like removing birthright citizenship and snatching civilians off the street. Unfortunately the pace of heinous acts being performed by this administration and those who act in its name outstrip our ability to keep up with them, and many of these events are swept into the “dustbin of history” after only a week and become nothing more than idle fact. As readers may have heard, this is the express goal.
Many people, institutions, and international communities have, rightly so, taken stances against these diabolical extremes and countless lawsuits have followed, worming their way through the justice system; however, two points become salient upon examination: 1. these stands are always a response to something Trump and co. have done and 2. these things keep happening.4
Herein lies the crux of what’s been nagging at me since the election: it is simply not enough to be anti-fascist (or by extension anti-Trump) anymore. It never was. Democrats have tried being anti-Trump5 in some capacity for about a decade now. How’s that worked out for them? Not well. Not well at all. Most antifa movements in the country have not accomplished much, either, though it’s certainly not for lack of trying, nor do I think antifa doesn’t matter — anyone who’s willing to go out and punch a fascist in the face is pretty cool in my book! Essentially, it seems that all opposition to Trump is exactly (and only) just that: opposition. There’s no positive6 (mainstream) movement offering something new in his place and because of this lack of positivity Trump and co. can continue to define what is acceptable, pulling the Overton Window ever further to the right. Notice that I wrote “something new” in the previous sentence. Most, if not all, serious mainstream objections to Trump carry the presupposition, explicit or otherwise, that what ought to happen is a return to “normalcy,” e.g., the status-quo of the post-war epoch, but of course whatever that normalcy entails no longer exists, if it ever did in the first place.7
The ultimate result of all this is that the fascists get to set the political agenda. Any prose, plead, or polemic against them only serves to legitimize the position they maintain (just look at how Trump has flipped any outcry into wins for him and his party) and by the same stroke denies the possibility for something new, truly new, to take its place. This shift extends beyond the current political moment. While what Trump can accomplish over the next four years deeply disturbs me, potentially frightening me more is what comes after. Democrats have already shown that they’re willing to align themselves with the “old guard” Republicans, and frankly their policy agenda is now closer to that of Republicans ten years ago, not that I believe Democrats offer any salvation regardless! Outside of our two abysmal parties, talk spirals along the guide-rails Trump and co. are putting in place, or revolves around survival — which is completely justified given the circumstances. In other words, things are settling. What kind of world will it be if climate change denial, anti-abortion, anti-research have all become not only mainstream8, but the status-quo? Put simply: what will become of a world where fascism is again the norm?
I won’t share what I think ought to be that “something new” I mentioned prior (again, I’m here to explicate what is, not what ought to be, but those who know me can probably guess what I’d say). I will instead conclude with some philosophy. For Søren Kirkegaard, the famed Danish existentialist, Socrates was this heroic, almost tragic character who’s irony endlessly negated the sophists so prevalent at his time exposing their claims of surpassing-ignorance as false, and thus allowing, not through him, but those who followed, a genuine production of truth.9 Unfortunately for us, we are in the “farce” period of historical recurrence, and instead of a brilliant Greek we get Trump. “Oh my god,” you may gasp, “did he just compare Donald Trump to Socrates?!” Yes, yes I did, in a sense at least. Make of that what you will. Anyways, my point is that one cannot hope to out-bullshit a professional bullshitter, and trying is only what he, and the rest of the fascists, want to happen.
Personally I dislike this phrase as it implies some kind of normative “sanity” that Trump and co. disrupt. By that logic, e.g., the genocide in Gaza is sane, as it seems every politician prior to and other than Trump is OK with it!
Also not a big fan of left/right distinctions, not because of any lamebrain horseshoe theory nonsense, but for reasons I’ll get into in a future post.
Some court cases have progressed to the point of injunction or even final opinion, but these have so far either been ignored or ineffective at stemming the wider tide of shit they’re doing (like with tariffs). Or, more simply, people forget and move on.
Note that Democrats are not anti-fascist! Anti-fascism and anti-Trumpism unfortunately do not share a bidirectional relationship.
Positive here used in the sense of adding, creating, sharing something new. I could get into the dialectical definitions but don’t want to put everyone to sleep …
How can we define a “normal epoch”? The 90s were pretty abnormal, and then 9/11 happened which established a new status quo, but then Trump was elected in 2016, and then COVID-19 hit in 2020, and so on and so on. It’s almost like American hegemony fabricates the past to use as its measuring stick!
Not that any of these haven’t been mainstream before. To quote Marx, himself quoting Hegel: “… all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice … the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
Again, skipping over the devilish dialectical details, but perhaps for a future essay!