Leaning on his golf club, the man is talkative. He moved from Houston to Eagle Pass, a block from the Mexican border, “quiet.” “Still, it’s not really relaxing,” I said, gesturing to the containers bristling with razors that line the Rio Grande, the members of the National Guard perched on top, the deafening hydrofoil of the Border Patrol which patrols the river every half hour, the 4x4s of state troopers from Texas who launch themselves onto the track at the edge of the green in a cloud of dust, the drone whirring above us… “I know,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, “We can’t wait for November. If [le candidat républicain] is re-elected, he will definitely get rid of all that. »
It’s hard not to raise eyebrows. It’s difficult not to tell him that a return to calm does not seem to be on the agenda, that everything this candidate says invalidates his point. As David A. Graham writes in The Atlantic : his supporters “often say that what they admire about him is that he says what he thinks, whether they like it or not.” But then, he asks, “why are they so reluctant to take him at his word?” »
It is the “providential man” that political science studies. Why else would the Evangelists be willing to believe in an adulterous messiah? Why would the supporters of the Constitution have faith in the man who sees himself as a dictator? Why would workers believe the president who historically gave the biggest tax cuts to the richest? Why would immigrants, some linked to undocumented (and deportable) migrants, think they are immune if he comes to power? Why would a significant portion of African-Americans embrace the man who called for the execution of the Central Park Five who have since been exonerated?
How does someone who belongs to the caste of the powerful manage to establish himself as a figurehead of the class struggle, against the elite and theestablishment ?
The answer lies as much in individuals, in the psyche of American society, as in the state of global geopolitics, as the world goes through a period of great uncertainty and anxiety. “To a political and social order [..] which no longer speaks to the imagination or the heart, to a disenchanted, discolored daily universe, corresponds to the call to other spells,” writes Raoul Girardet. Of those who freeze the blood, made of “flamboyant processions”, “songs, torches and banners”.
The resurgence of the old theme of decadence, of a bygone golden age, of the dismantling of established values is nothing new. This feeling of social destructuring, of dislocation of spiritual forces, the internal contradictions between modernization and archaism, as well as the bastardization of powerless democracies constitute a call for air, and find a solution, which authors like Barrington Moore describe, in fascism . Fascism, as a moral crisis, moral malattiato use the words of Benedetto Croce.
The post-January 20, 2021 lull is over and discussions with federal agents, academics, judges and other political actors now begin with “if he is re-elected…”. To continue with the planned dismantling of environmental and social policies, legal protections, the rule of law.
Because it is indeed the advent of a fascist regime that is at stake. The analysis is obviously complex, and there will always be a pocket expert at the counter to assert that the use of this term is an exaggeration. Even though research has been deciphering it for over a century now, even though the key is to see it in nuances, from brown to black, because everything is gradation. Contemporary analyzes evoke a “fascist authoritarian model of illiberal democracy” and the difficulty of locating the point of no return.
Because Palmiro Togliatti would say, “nothing is more like a chameleon” than fascism. It is based on a specific national substrate and modulates the providential man, past glory, physical and organized violence, the definition of objective enemies, identity-based nationalism, populism, the primacy of a people to be freed from internationalist influences. , the delegitimization of factual sources and the creation of an alternative reality. And above all the destruction of the presumed predatory State (“ Drain the swamp “) which would be populated by inept and all-powerful bureaucrats (capable of the worst plots) – which David Corn names with irony in Mother Jones the “Schrödinger bureaucrat” (the one who exists and does not exist at the same time).
The “providential man” that Marjorie Taylor Greene sees as the arm of God has a plan which openly places him (his speeches are eloquent, explicit, unambiguous) in the specter of fascism: he thinks himself above the law, free from any obligation to be accountable and able to mobilize a force that he deems legitimate to attack his opponents, being ready to bend government institutions to his benefit. Starting with the army.
And since the paralyzed Congress will not be able to act as a counterweight, only the courts will remain. And that is why he directly attacks the integrity of judges Merchan, Chutkan and Engoron who have to rule on the cases that concern him, by attacking their families if necessary, with intolerable virulence. in a state of law. This violence may be enough to ultimately muzzle a judicial system which relies precisely on the ability of judges to exercise their functions without fear. Because it would be naive to believe that power regulates itself.
This is why we must name deviations when they occur. Although, as the adage erroneously attributed to writer Sinclair Lewis goes, “when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”
On the Eagle Pass golf course, the man resumed his course. The drone moves away. And the hydrofoil has just passed for the third time. One of state troopers walks around his 4×4, hand on his gun. In this border space, a laboratory of arbitrariness, surveillance, and violence, the future is almost palpable. And that afternoon, the text of the sticker affixed to the first volume of the comic strip comes to mind The president (by François Durpaire and Farid Boudjellal): “we cannot say that we did not know”.