The Next Pandemic: Fascism
COVID-19 Numbers
As of right now, the four countries with the most recorded COVID-19 infections are: the USA, Brazil, India, and Russia. All but one of those, Russia, share a common characteristic: they’re led by a right-wing populist. Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro (President of Brazil), and Narendra Modi (Prime Minister of India) are all part of a growing international trend toward right-wing populism. And while Vladimir Putin is not a right-wing populist, there’s evidence that Russia did assist in getting each of the other three elected. The poor responses to the COVID-19 pandemic from these countries is a valuable lens to view this trend through.
For those who don’t know, the main tenets of right-wing populism are themes of “common people” versus “the establishment”, and a strong sense of nationalism through policies that are anti-immigration and anti-globalism. This is typically accompanied with racism, bigotry, and militarism. These are all traits shared with fascism, with the key difference being that fascism requires an autocracy while right-wing populism can exist in a democratic system. This is why right-wing populists are dangerous, and must be observed closely: if fascists were to take over a country, they would start as right-wing populists and undermine the existing government in order to take complete control. This is what history’s two most infamous fascists, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, did, and is why historians have warned about the similarities between those fascists and today’s right-wing populists.
One step in a fascist takeover is to sow distrust in the media: Trump’s “fake news” is just history’s latest reincarnation of Hitler’s “lying press” and Mussolini’s confiscation of newspapers. This is important, because the press is a key factor in informing the people of a leader’s wrongdoings. If the population trusts the leader and not the media, the leader can corrupt the country right in front of their eyes, and they won’t be held accountable because the people won’t believe it when the media tries to play watchdog.
So, what does this have to do with the pandemic?
Well, for starters, right-wing populism and fascism tend to come with anti-intellectual sentiments for a similar reason to the media mistrust: denying science, facts, evidence, and experts makes the populace easier to deceive. Here’s some blatantly anti-intellectual Nazi propaganda, and Mussolini’s claim that men should be anti-intellectual. This same sentiment, now used to fuel things like climate change denial, has played a large role in the USA’s poor COVID-19 response, by reducing the population’s likelihood of believing in and following the advice of experts on things like social distancing and wearing masks.
But that’s the less concerning reason in my eyes. The bigger issue is that this may actually be what they want*. Sowing distrust in the media and experts is a key step to enacting fascism, but at some point, actual power grabs have to be made, and the easiest time to do that is during times of chaos, hardship, and turmoil.
Germany’s Weimar Republic was rattled by economic problems originating from the Great Depression, which caused social unrest and protests across the country. The SA, or Brownshirts, were a Nazi paramilitary group that fought to suppress these protests. This dynamic allowed Hitler and the Nazis to round up support from citizens upset about the unrest, by painting themselves as the party of law and order. Then, the burning of the Reichstag was blamed on Communists and used as justification for Hitler to claim more power. In Italy, there was a general strike that Mussolini, with the help of the Blackshirt fascist militias, ended. This framed them as the party of law and order (notice a trend?), and garnered the King’s support, ultimately allowing Mussolini to take over. That all sounds eerily similar to what’s happened recently in the USA:
Vigilante groups in America, emboldened by Trump promoting violence toward protesters, beating BLM protesters are today’s Blackshirts/Brownshirts. The Proud Boys are perhaps even more similar to these groups. They’re described as “a far-right neo-fascist organization that ... promotes and engages in political violence”, and they have a paramilitary wing called the "Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights".
Trump blaming “antifa” for protests was his rendition of blaming the Reichstag fire on Communists. Antifa is just a boogeyman, not an organization.
The secret police Trump sent into Portland was his version of Hitler’s Gestapo and Mussolini’s OVRA. This was done against the will of the city and state, which breaks the Tenth Amendment. They were kidnapping innocent people without due process, breaking the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and they routinely broke up peaceful protests, breaking the First Amendment. The government breaking 40% of the Bill of Rights in one action should raise red flags for everyone, and must have our Founding Fathers rolling in their graves.
Trump attempting to deploy the military in cities and declaring himself the President of law and order was his attempt at a power grab, using the exact same justification as the Nazis and Mussolini.
This is all straight out of the playbook of fascist takeovers (the Republicans strongly exhibit every single one of the 14 signs of fascism), and we are lucky the top brass of the US military didn’t go along with the last bullet point, or the USA would’ve been a fascist country at this very moment. If we allow for four more years of degrading our democracy, there likely will be no one left to stop it.
When we notice the similarities here, it becomes reasonable to think maybe they were hoping for this kind of turmoil as their chance to make power grabs. The PATRIOT Act violated the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, the one that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but it passed without much push back because people expected it to provide more security after 9/11. This shows a recent precedent in US politics for making opportunistic power grabs during times of turmoil. Any reasonably savvy politician or advisor would know that a poor response to COVID-19 would result in tumultuous times in their country, so it doesn’t seem out of the question that these right-wing populists are purposely messing up the response in hopes of pushing toward fascism.
I want to be clear that I couldn’t know for sure if this was their intent, but what I described above does give a pretty clear motive for doing so, and here is some evidence of them intentionally harming the response in the US:
At the start of the pandemic, the US was exporting medical supplies even though we had shortages domestically.
Mike Pence, who has a track record of poorly handling epidemics, was put in charge of the COVID-19 response.
FEMA has confiscated, often without explanation of why, the medical supplies and tests that states have ordered to meet their own needs. There were cases where states had to hide their supplies from their own federal government, for fear of them being confiscated.
Trump tweeted about, and promoted protests in favor of, “liberating” states when lockdowns were imposed, undermining our ability to adequately reduce infection rates.
Beyond just simply refusing to support wearing masks, Trump has actively opposed it by claiming wearing a mask is an anti-Trump political statement.
None of this guarantees this was intentional, but it’s still damning either way. At best, this shows that Trump has been an incompetent leader who allowed tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of Americans to die unnecessarily, and just happens to echo the tactics and rhetoric of some of history’s worst leaders.
That’s the best case scenario.
At worst, he’s intentionally killing those tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans by letting the disease spread, in hopes of undermining and overthrowing our democracy. Either way, this is a very grim moment in US history, and we need to make it a turning point, rather than a stepping stone on the way to a fascist future.
* - Note: since this was posted, audio has been released of Trump admitting that he did, in fact, purposefully and knowingly downplay COVID-19, validating the claims of this post.
Path Forward
Obviously voting Trump out of office is the first step here, but it doesn’t stop there. We also need to vote all other Republicans out as well, as they’ve shown clear, unwavering support for Trump and his corrupt actions. If you think this is an exaggeration, first look at the impeachment vote, for two crimes that Trump openly admitted to committing, in both the House and Senate. Then, go read the RNC’s official 2020 platform. It’s only one page long because they decided to not write an actual platform and instead state that the entire party’s platform is “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda”. If that’s not clear, unwavering support, I don’t know what is. This is how democracies become authoritarian.
And that’s just in 2020. The rise of right-wing populism is largely fueled by anger among citizens over immigrants “taking over our country”. To make matters worse, climate change is going to increase the rate of immigration from places like the Middle East and Latin America, as they become increasingly uninhabitable, causing more economic and political turmoil, and forcing people to move away from the equator. If the mindset of hatred toward those people isn’t reduced in this country, tensions are only going to get worse.
For that reason, we need to end this sentiment in US politics entirely, not just remove the current leadership. Many of the young Republicans in the House and Senate have similar right-wing populist tendencies to Trump. Some examples are Tom Cotton (Senator, AR), Josh Hawley (Senator, MO), Matt Gaetz (Representative, FL-1), as well as Fox commentator Tucker Carlson. These people are the future of the party, and that future seems to be moving in the direction of Trumpism, not away from it. If that’s the case, then the party needs to be continually beaten in the ballot box until it’s removed from relevance or it shifts to a less extremist position. Otherwise they will eventually wear our democracy down enough to plunge the country into fascism. With the strongest, most technologically advanced military the world’s ever known on their side, that fascist regime would be extremely difficult to overthrow.
