This Is Fascism, it Must Be Stopped
No Chance to Surrender
Sometimes some of the best proof of something or someone’s essence is found in one of its more forgotten manifestations.
I spent much of the first Donald Trump administration gobsmacked by the failure and refusal of numerous academics, journalists, and commentators to acknowledge that the 45th President of the United States and the movement supporting him was fascist.
The first three chapters of my 2021 book This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America painstakingly described and documented the core fascist essence and content of Trump, Trumpism, and the first Trump administration[1]. The volume’s fourth chapter was titled “The Anatomy of Fascism Denial.”
Of all the evidence I compiled against this denial, the most underestimated episode perhaps was Trump45’s response to the killing of Michael Reinoehl — an incident far less remembered and appreciated than Trump45’s notorious Charlottesville comments (“very fine people on both sides”), Trump45’s Biblical clearing of Lafayette Square, Trump45’s call for the military to shoot George Floyd protesters in the legs, Trump45’s call-out to the fascist Proud Boys (“Stand By!”), and of course January 6 (which could end up being remembered as Trump’s version of Adolph Hitler’s 1924 Beer Hall Putsch).
I am referring to the Gestapo-like state murder of the antifascist Michael Reinoehl on September 3, 2020 and Trump’s response to the killing.
Reinoehl had shot Aaron Danielson, a member of the Christian fascist and white nationalist group Patriot Prayer while Danielson was physically assaulting Black Lives protesters in Portland, Oregon, on August 29, 2020. He claimed that he acted in self-defense.
Whether Reinoehl was guilty of homicide will never be known because he was gunned down by local and state police (deputized as US Marshals) during a 15-second 40-shot fusillade in an apartment complex parking lot five days later. As the New York Times reported in a December 2020 article titled “‘Straight to Gunshots’”:
“a reconstruction of what happened that night, based on the accounts of people who witnessed the confrontation and the preliminary findings of investigators, produces a …picture…that raises questions about whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him…In interviews with 22 people who were near the scene, all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire. In their official statements, not yet made public, the officers offered differing accounts of whether they saw Mr. Reinoehl with a weapon. One told investigators he thought he saw Mr. Reinoehl raise a gun inside the vehicle before the firing began, but two others said they did not…Five eyewitnesses said in interviews that the gunfire began the instant the vehicles arrived. None of them saw Mr. Reinoehl holding a weapon. A single shell casing of the same caliber as the handgun he was carrying was found inside his car…Garrett Louis, who watched the shooting begin while trying to get his 8-year-old son out of the line of fire, said the officers arrived with such speed and violence that he initially assumed they were drug dealers gunning down a foe — until he saw their law enforcement vests. ‘I respect cops to the utmost, but things were definitely in no way, shape or form done properly,’ Mr. Louis said.”
According to a subsequent lawsuit brought against Reinoehl’s killers, Washington state and local police dressed in “militia-style fatigues” tore through a sedate residential neighborhood in unmarked cars. The officers sprayed the neighborhood with more than 40 bullets, killing Reinoehl, grazing a child [!], and hitting homes and backyard playground equipment. “The actions of the officers, before, during, and after the shooting, show that they either had no plan to arrest the man without injury, made no effort to follow such a plan, or planned to use deadly force from the start.” Reinoehl was given no chance to surrender.
“We Got …Retribution”
Trump, the Associated Press reported, cheered on the manhunt for Reinoehl, tweeting just before he was killed, calling for police to ‘Do your job, and do it fast.’”
As the Times reported six weeks after the killing:
“President Trump on Thursday cheered the actions of a federal task force that killed Michael Reinoehl, an antifa activist from Portland, Ore., who had been wanted in the fatal shooting of a far-right Trump supporter. ‘It took 15 minutes, it was over,’ Mr. Trump said to supporters at a campaign rally in North Carolina. ‘We got him….We sent in the U.S. Marshals,’ he went on. ‘It took 15 minutes, it was over. We got him.’ Mr. Trump, seeking to push crime and safety as major issues in his re-election bid, has brought up the shooting several times, once calling it ‘retribution.’”
That’s right: “RETRIBUTION” – for the murder of a violent street fascist.
Reinoehl’s killers were cleared of any charges by a Washington state prosecutor. An April 2021 Times investigation found that the prosecutor “discounted key pieces of evidence that indicate” — contrary to what the federal task force/hit squad claimed — “Mr. Reinoehl may never have fired or pointed a gun.”
Beyond the forensic details (rehashed in a subsequent lawsuit), my main point here is that Trump referred to the rapid extrajudicial federal execution of an anti-fascist activist who killed a street-fighting fascist — either criminally or justifiably (the truth will never be known) — as “RETRIBUTION.” In doing so, Trump aligned himself and the police with street-level fascist thuggery in a very direct way.
Later, in perhaps the second most underestimated sign of his fascistic essence, Trump45 travelled on the very last night of the 2020 presidential campaign to hold a hate rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where the teen fascist Kyle Rittenhouse had murdered two people with an illegally owned AR-15 during an August 25, 2020 Black Lives march. It was another sign of terrible things to come. (Trump would later fete Rittenhouse at Mar a Lago and the fascist education activist Charlie Kirk would try to turn the young killer into a folk hero.)
This is Fascism
Here we are nearly four and a half years after the deaths of Danielson, Reinoehl, and the absurdly exonerated killer Rittenhouse’s two fatal victims (Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber). Mein Trumpf, properly identified by Noam Chomsky five years ago as “the most dangerous criminal in human history[2],” is back in power, in brazen defiance of the third section of the UIS Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment (which on paper bans insurrectionists from holding public office). It’s hard for me to believe that anybody with any remotely serious knowledge of history and current events could still even now be mired in fascism-denial regarding the Orange Beast and its party and movement.
“Fascism,” the Refuse Fascism (RF) website tells us:
“is a qualitative change in how society is governed. It foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive ‘traditional values.’ Fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build the movement and consolidate power.. Fascism rules by decree, backed up by brute force and violent thugs.. Dissent is criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. Group after group is targeted along a trajectory that leads to horror.”
Fascism eliminates previously normative and traditional bourgeois electoral, parliamentary, and rule of law democracy
And that’s what the Trump47 regime is trying to pull off. As RF’s recent flyer calling for mass protests nationwide next Monday says:
“Immigrants demonized and rounded up. Blatant racism and anti-women, anti-LGBTQ+ hate spews forth. Civil rights and even speaking of equality banned. Whole countries threatened. Anti-science lunatics empowered to destroy health care. Media muzzled. Theocracy and Christian fundamentalist supremacy hammered into place. Rapid Climate destruction is Trump’s program.”
Fascist thugs have been unleashed, including the former heads of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers released from jail to intimidate those who refuse a fascist America.
Trump and his cult party have put an open Christian fascist and white nationalist atop the Department of Defense. This new Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, is the member of a far-right church whose pastor preaches that women belong in the home and that America’s best race relations took place under chattel slavery. Hegseth considers the United States’ chief enemies to be internal: liberals, leftists, gay people, transgendered folk, women’s liberation advocates, racial justice advocates, immigrants, and more. He is certainly chomping at the bit to deploy the military against homeland protesters if and when Mein Trumpf acts on his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act.
This is fascism. That’s what Trump and allies and operatives are trying to ram down the nation’s throat in a many-sided policy Blitzkrieg they hail as “Shock and Awe.” The speed and multiplicity of the attacks is a signature part of the fascism. It is meant to disorient, overwhelm, and paralyze us, rendering us speechless, demoralized, atomized, and powerless.
Only a mass movement of millions can stop and defeat this insanity, which needs to be called out by its real name: FASCISM.
“This Will Require Sacrifice”
Will some folks meet Michael Reinoehl’s fate — extra-judicial execution — in the process of rising up to refuse fascist consolidation under Trump47, even without themselves engaging in violence, unlike Reinoehl? That would be my guess. As I reported in the late summer of 2020, more than a dozen nonviolent anti-racists lost their lives to murderous vigilante and state violence during the George Floyd Rebellion.
Last May the fascist governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, pardoned Daniel Perry, who was convicted by a jury of his peers for murdering a Black Lives protester, Garrett Foster, in Austin, Texas in the summer of 2020. Before committing his crime, Perry had texted his friends about his plans to murder a George Floyd protester.
“With this pardon,” Foster’s widow Whitney Mitchell said, Herr Abbott “desecrated the life of a murdered Texan…impugned the jury’s just verdict” and “declared that Texans who hold political views that are different from his — and different from those in power — can be killed in this State with impunity.”
Does this mean “stay home if you know what’s good for you”? It will mean that for some of us but it must not mean that for most of us. This is because the body count of letting fascism consolidate across American government and society will be monumentally higher than the body count of standing up in giant numbers to make America ungovernable under Trumpist Amerikaner Republi-Nazi rule.
It isn’t even close. As Refuse Fascism (on whose editorial board I sit) points out in its recent call for a national day of protest on Monday, February 17:
“What we face is FASCISM consolidating its rule in the most powerful country in the world. It echoes the Confederacy, Jim Crow, and Nazi Germany, but there is no historical precedent for fascism dominating the world with the climate at a tipping point and nuclear-armed powers at each other’s throats. The Trump Regime threatens the very future of humanity and life on the planet.[2] It must be STOPPED! Defeating Trump and MAGA fascism will require a huge and relentless resistance waged by millions of people standing up in the streets and throughout society to create such a profound political crisis that Trump cannot govern the country and carry out his fascist program. This will require sacrifice. It will require courage and heroism in the streets and by people in government, in hospitals, in schools, and really by all who Trump tries to order and intimidate into following his dictates. There is not a moment to lose. History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late. If we act now, there is a future to win.”
Please see RF’s recent Webinar on the need for mass protests and how to hold a rally next Monday here.
Endnotes
+1. See also the opening chapter (titled “Is it the Fascist Apocalypse Yet?”) of my 2020 book Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump, and the Politics of Appeasement (CounterPunch Books, September 2020)
+2. Noam Chomsky in January of 2020: “Are the crimes discussed a basis for [Trump’s first] impeachment? Seems so to me. Has Trump committed vastly more serious crimes? That is hardly debatable. What might be debatable is whether he is indeed the most dangerous criminal in human history (which happens to be my personal view). Hitler had been perhaps the leading candidate for this honor. His goal was to rid the German-run world of Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other “deviants,” along with tens of millions of Slav ‘Untermenschen.’ But Hitler was not dedicated with fervor to destroying the prospects of organized human life on Earth in the not-distant future (along with millions of other species). ..Trump is. And those who think he doesn’t know what he’s doing haven’t been looking closely.”
MAGA – Monstrous Avarice Goes Apeshit
Image by Visuals.
The Musky waft coming off the Trump Card is Yahu-ing down the corridors of power. This U.S. administration is alarming to the sane, the reasonable and the humanitarian within only weeks in power. So what dystopian world are we looking at in four year’s time with this megalomaniacal, vengeful infant and his greedy cronies? Trump decried the ‘elites’ prior to getting his grubby hands on the talking stick; they were to blame for all of America’s ills, apparently. He was going to drain the swamp. What he didn’t tell the voters was that he was going to exchange the swamp for a festering quagmire of hate and revenge. The ‘elite’ story is different now that Trump has the stick firmly in his hands and is surrounded by the ultimate elite: the richest man on earth. Good luck America, this is what the majority voted for. Put your crash helmets on and take a seat, it’s going to get bumpy for you and the rest of the world. But hey, Make America Great Again! Or should MAGA mean Monstrous Avarice Goes Apeshit.
History tells us that hate, racism and greed never ends well. Nor does Fascism. Where there is injustice, there is war and resistance to that injustice. Israel is being rewarded like victors with the green light from Trump to take what is not legally theirs – Gaza. Gaza has been demolished but the land is apparently of greater value than humans. Nowhere else in the world would war criminals be rewarded by the most powerful nation on earth for the grievous harm they’ve caused to two million vulnerable people and having killed 46,000+. Within that shocking number is 18,000 children. It’s like being in a surreal world where evil is rewarded and human rights obliterated.
Trump wants the U.S. to ‘take over Gaza’ and ‘own it long-term’. Hypothetically, when the U.S. and Israeli bulldozers and land clearing machinery start to rev up their engines for a ‘Second Florida’, they will unearth thousands and thousands of bones, body parts and flesh that have been buried under Israeli and U.S. bombs. A veritable graveyard.
But for anyone who has been watching the nightmare of the attempted genocide of the Palestinians from their homeland, it should be no surprise that those at the top of Israeli and U.S. governments have been plotting and scheming behind closed doors to take away Palestinian human rights, freedom, their homes, the right to safety and the right to their land. The people of Gaza are not illegal immigrants to be shoved off to wherever Trump and his heartless cronies can think of. Perhaps the moon is not far enough in the mind of Zionists to rid themselves of the pesky Palestinians who had no part in the genocide of the Jews in WWII yet are paying the price.
I have bleated repeatedly that the moment Trump seizes power he will attempt to give Gaza to his buddy Netanyahu and has probably asked for the juiciest, prime piece of the Gaza strip to be kept aside for him and his family to build a beautiful Mediterranean villa: yacht mooring optional. ‘Mazel tov, Mr President!’ Genocide is not a real estate opportunity nor the “art of the deal” for the rich and settler-colonialists.
But! It ain’t happening. The world must (and will) step in. I have also bleated repeatedly that if we let this gross, colossal injustice slip by, and people on the other side of the world are treated so unjustly, then who’s next? The bloke down the road who owns a house that you quite admire and would like to steal when he goes on holiday? Or perhaps the weakest member of society who wouldn’t notice their savings being confiscated. When vulnerable people are not protected, none of us are.
We must stop this madness before it becomes a common occurrence when those who are powerless are trodden on, stamped out and considered to be sub-human. I think the term used was ‘human animals’. Trump also labelled his voters as ‘basement dwellers’. Beware the sneaky fascism rising like a ghastly reminder of times past.
The likes of Trump, Musk, Netanyahu and all others who strongly believe they are more important, more worthy of wealth and safety and more human, must be curtailed, controlled or at least managed by those around them to put guard rails, safety off ramps and boundaries that these elites are not prepared to put in place for themselves. Surely there’s people immediately around Trump who are looking askance at his fiery invective. Surely there’s people around him who have morals and ethics. Surely.
Perhaps America is going down, but they will take the rest of the world with them if someone doesn’t step up and challenge the bullies, the oppressors and the financially very powerful. Musk is even more dangerous because he is unelected and therefor unaccountable.
As the Danish politician, Anders Vistisen, so succinctly told Mr. Trump, “Greenland is not for sale.” Neither is Gaza, the West Bank, the Palestinians or any other region or peoples. Those days are over where settler-colonialism is tolerated and people can be bought and sold. Mr. Trump, you’ll just have to forego subsuming Canada into your borders, Panama into your shipping needs and Gaza into your Mediterranean holiday plans.
When Trump said he would bring peace to the Middle East, he was fooling no one he meant peace for the Palestinians. It has been patently clear from the moment he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem which side he was on.
There’s a horrifying déjà vu lurking on the horizon where the minority and the vulnerable are being singled out for cruelty and obliteration. History is shouting out a lesson we’d be wise to heed.
No comments:
Post a Comment