According to many Democratic Party activists, what is at stake in Tuesday’s midterm elections is an existential struggle: maintaining democracy in the face of the threat of fascism. President Biden — not really versed in the history of the 1930s and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, nor of the civil war in Spain — sounded the alarm himself in late August when he asserted that this ideological threat did not come “just from Trump”, but from “a whole underlying philosophy — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism”.
And here comes the avalanche. Since that verbally clumsy but tactically clear statement, websites have been spouting outright accusations at Republican candidates—formerly called “hard rightists” or “evangelical Christian fanatics”—who have suddenly become adherents of a political movement that set Europe on fire and caused the death of 50 million people.
On September 29, the website Our Revolution, the quasi-official mouthpiece of Senator Bernie Sanders, trumpeted that “fascist Ron Johnson” had taken the lead in the federal Senate race in Wisconsin and that Johnson “was a dangerous traitor who had ordered his staff to offer fake voters to Vice President Pence on January 6, 2021 as part of Trump’s violent plot to overthrow American democracy.” Johnson had to be beaten in order “to prevent a fascist takeover of the Senate”.
For my part, I find these condemnations exaggerated, even arising from ignorance. As Robert Paxton, a great historian of fascism and Vichy, explained, Donald Trump, unlike the Führer and the Duce, advocates an economic and social libertarianism that has nothing to do with the interventionism and repression practiced by the most famous 20th century dictatorse century. And again, one cannot necessarily assume that Trump was able to think before he acted, in contrast to Hitler, who often planned his actions carefully and had the ability to write down what he thought. To credit Trump with the skill of planning a putsch in advance seems absurd. Morally and constitutionally illiterate, Trump is a detestable plutocrat, not an evil genius.
That said, Democratic “anti-fascist” propaganda risks missing the real issues animating a working class already alienated by Bill Clinton’s destructive free trade policy and now appalled by the illegal immigration crisis, a subject dear to Trump. The belligerent rejection of refugees—hatred of the Other—expressed during the Trump administration is also considered “fascist” by many mainstream Democrats and much of the left.
However, the “fascist” governors of Florida and Texas, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, are smarter than Trump. They also hammer home the huge influx of economic and political refugees from Latin America. But there they changed the game by sending thousands of these undocumented people on planes and buses to upscale locals in Martha’s Vineyard and the cities of New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., all run by elected Democrats. . Their purpose, of course, is to underscore the supposed hypocrisy of the Democrats — it’s all very well to attack the mean Republicans in the frontier states who push back and harass refugees, but it’s quite another thing when those same refugees arrive in Midtown. Manhattan, with the vast majority being poor, homeless and speaking no English.
Democrats are right to denounce the cynical tactics of DeSantis and Abbott, but it is still the “fascists” who have the political advantage. Today, in New York City, there remain at least 55,000 homeless people, including more than 17,000 children. With the arrival since April of more than 17,000 asylum seekers – transported from Texas by Governor Abbott – the mayor of New York declared a state of emergency and had huge tents erected on an island of the EastRiver. These are the consequences, DeSantis and Abbott argue, of a “radical” policy of “open borders.”
In reality, Biden and Obama have been as tough on undocumented immigrants as the Trump administration, but their enforcement has been less visible. However, making such comparisons largely misses the effect and image of mass immigration on the economically precarious or modest electorate. What the typical worker notices – not at all xenophobic or fascist – is the following phenomenon: a surplus of labor lowers wages, and the addition of many illegal immigrants lowers the rate of employment for legal workers. A concept easy to understand if you read the columnist of the Maine Sunday Telegram Victoria Hugo-Vidal, a rarity in her profession. Why so much illegal immigration? “Big companies want to use undocumented workers because it’s cheaper — they don’t have to pay social security contributions or the minimum wage if it’s black cash — and because they want to be able to threaten expelling their employees if they step out of line or speak out about their poor working conditions. Neither the “radical” Democrats, who are sentimental about undocumented migrants, nor the “fascist” Republicans, who caricature them, have any interest in helping them. Too bad for them ; too bad for American workers.
John R. MacArthur is editor of Harper’s Magazine. His column returns at the beginning of each month.