‘The Devil You Know? A Response to Recent Revisionist History From the Contrarian “Left”

NinaIllingworth December 18, 2020November 5, 2022 21st century fascism, Aimee Terese, Amerikan Musik, Angela Nagle, anticommunism, Caitlin Johnstone, contrarian left, crypto fascism, distortions, Donald Trump, Downmarket Mussolini, Essays, FA1, fake populism, Fantastic Lies, fascism, gaslighting, Glenn Greenwald, GOP, GOP is fascist, Hitler, independent media, Jason Stanley, Jim Crow fascism, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, Lee Fang, left right alliance, left wing theory, liberalism empowers fascism, lie, Marxism, Marxist analysis, Masha Gessen, Matt Stoller, Matt Taibbi, Media, Mike Tracey, MP6, Mussolini, neoliberalism, Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed, Palmer Raids, Palooka Joe, Politics, reactionary thought, Red Scare podcast, Republican Party, right wing populism, Ron Paul libertarians, skeptics, social media, ST2, Stupidpol, the Red Scare, Theory, Timothy Snyder, Trump Coup, Trump is a fascist, Trump isn't Hitler but so what?, Trumpism is fascism, woke neoliberalism, Zaid Jilani

Author’s note: I wrote this piece in the garage again and mostly from memory, so please forgive me for using the same sourcing links multiple times; it was a time-saving decision primarily. This in turn factored into which influencers and media people I chose to highlight here to exemplify a broader (but still minority) wave of opinion in the online “left” – if you made the list, it’s because I remembered you without having to look it up online, so I guess you’ve at least got that going for you.

Which sort of leaves the elephant in the room; this article is not a Take Down, or call out piece; it’s an Op-Ed rebuttal to a very general argument that Trump is not a fascist and Trumpism is not fascism, which has been propagated by a fairly small, but influential community of somewhat ideologically aligned libertarian “leftists.” While I think these people have a lot of reactionary views, and I’m not sure the divide isn’t large enough to say they are simply not on the left at all, I want to be clear that I’m not calling anyone mentioned in this article a fascist (well, except maybe Tracey…) nor am I suggesting this is all some kind of coordinated reactionary psyop. It is entirely possible that these folks are just like-minded friends and industry co-workers hanging out together online and they, like most Americans have no real idea what fascism is. I’m saying your faves have sh*t-tier opinions, distorted memories of Trump’s four year term and should probably shut the f*ck up about what is and isn’t fascism, because clearly they don’t have a clue – so if you’re going to be angry, be angry about that.

Finally, I should like to mention that I didn’t spend a day an a half searching out citations for this essay to argue about what is and isn’t an ad hominem attack, with Mike Tracey fanboys; click on the links.

A Long Overdue Discussion

Have you ever found yourself wondering if you should just find a nice comfy hole in the middle of nowhere and watch the world die? Yeah, me neither. The bitter irony here is that thanks to incessant gaslightighting by high profile figures in what is politely becoming known as the “contrarian left” online, I find myself writing a lengthy essay about why calling Trump and Trumpism fascist isn’t some kind of liberal psyop, while I’m watching videos that feature a pro-Trump fascist street gang violently terrorizing and intimidating the residents of Washington D.C to ultimately overturn a democratic (such as it is) election on behalf of their deified Führer-figure. Frankly, I should have written this essay weeks ago but I was too damn exhausted and having to defend my well established, and thoroughly-supported-by-documentation position about modern Americanized fascism at the same time as the soon-to-be ex-President is attempting to rally the chuds towards starting an uprising, and vast portions of the Republican Party are still trying to overturn a legal election result, is in a word infuriating. I tried to ignore all of this; I swear to you I really did. As we move further and further away from the nauseating 2020 US presidential election however, the endless churn of online rage-mongering from this contrarian left and folks pretending to be such, has irked me enough to force my hand.

You’d better buckle up buttercup, this is going to be a terse one and some of you might not want to be my valentine once it’s over. Let’s start by clearing away the trolls so we can get down to a proper rebuttal discussion, shall we? If the biggest question on your mind right now is “what makes you say Trump is a fascist,” “what evidence do you have that Trumpism is Americanized fascism” or “what is your definition of fascism” – please read this essay-length primer on modern fascism and click on the links inside; I promise this article will still be here when you get back. Are we ready to move forward now? Great.

Hello? We Just Watched An Attempted Coup

At this point I must confess that I find myself somewhat dismayed and repulsed by the bizarre and often revisionist arguments recently being employed by folks who claim to be leftists, to attack antifascist observers who (rightly) identified the fascist nature of Trump, Trumpism and the swine emperor’s (admittedly pathetic) attempted coup. This is of course an absurd, at least slightly reactionary position, and at this point I think I’ve written an entire book’s worth of articles that clearly demonstrate as much; in fact the argument is so obtuse that one is almost forced to assume that the guys making it have been living under a rock, have ulterior motives, or more likely, simply have no idea what the hell fascism actually is – which probably stands to reason, since the Cold War history of the Pig Empire has lead to a purposeful redefinition of fascism that in some ways comes down to “it’s not fascist unless it’s literally Hitler and succeeds in installing the Third Reich Nazi dictatorship.” It does at this point bear noting that I’m not trying to imply that this is a dominant or even majority position in the online left, but rather that of a vocal, aggressive and highly influential minority in the faux-left and left-leaning online discourse. It must also be said however that what these folks lack in numbers, they compensate for by being overly-confident about a subject with which they clearly have little if any familiarity; namely fascism.

Take for example Corey Robin’s recent interview piece in Jewish Currents, during which he argues that Trumpism is “almost the complete opposite of fascism” because Trump’s administration lacked the power and political will to enact his most heinous and openly fascist policy proposals. Even setting aside the literally mind-numbing amount of awful, objectively fascist shit Trump was able to accomplish during his term as president, the entire intellectual basis of this argument is flawed and demonstrates Robin has literally no idea what fascism is except in relation to Hitler and the Nazi Party. The obvious problem with this type of thinking or extremely narrow definition of fascism is not only that it argues with accomplished scholars who literally survived the rise of fascism in Europe, but also that such a definition would inherently assume that Hitler himself and the Nazi Party weren’t actually fascists until they’d dismantled democracy (with the willing assistance of German conservatives) and established the Third Reich – an utterly ludicrous proposition considering Hitler and the boys had been spreading fascist thought across Europe for an entire decade by the time they seized power and passed the Enabling Act. Taking the analogy even further, by this same logic Hitler’s beer hall putsch in Bavaria (which never had much chance of succeeding) was not actually a coup attempt; just as somehow Trump’s legal coup attempt, openly supported by huge portions of the establishment right, multiple U.S. Senators, State Governors, State Legislatures and over a hundred sitting GOP members of Congress, is not a coup attempt because it will almost certainly not be successful. Although Robin didn’t bother, you could I suppose choose to quibble linguistically with the differences between a coup d’état and an autogolpe, but that too would be more than a little fatuous and I’m glad on at least this point, Corey managed to maintain his composure. On the whole however these arguments are all, to put it politely, a load of steaming bull-puckey.

Surprise! Keyboard Reactionaries Don’t Understand Fascism

To be clear, a significant portion of this criticism is also coming from a combative, contrarian online “left” and is often spearheaded by ex-libertarian windbags that I myself consider at least somewhat reactionary from an ideological perspective. With advance apologies for generalizing the positions of multiple “independent” pundits into a single amalgamated argument, these people essentially start from a similar line of reasoning to Robin’s (that Trump’s failure to establish a dictatorship means he isn’t a fascist) and add the theory that calling Trump and Trumpism fascist is merely hysterical liberal scaremongering designed to cow the left into supporting a neoliberal agenda. Of course adopting this position once again requires one to selectively forget that it was Trump, not the Democratic Party that brought a bunch of confirmed white nationalists into government, ordered DHS to start black bagging protesters in the street like they were terrorists and called neonazi rioters, a fascist street gang and the reactionary Q-Anon conspiracy cult fine upstanding Americans, essentially. I mean at the point that you’re arguing concentration camps for babies, forced sterilizations of migrant women and sending the f*cking army to the border to fight a fake war against a migrant caravan “invasion” isn’t fascism, but activists taking Mike Tracey’s phone at protest and refusing to give it back until he uncomfortably said “Black Lives Matter” is basically “the real fascism,” why should any reasonable person take anything you say about fascism seriously at all?

So be it then; perhaps we can just ignore sketchy apologists for reactionary cops like Lee Fang, Matt Taibbi or Zaid Jilani among others, because even if few of them would admit it, it’s readily apparent that on some level, most of the people in this larger ideological circle have long been committed to the ideas that “woke” corporate neoliberalism is the primary enemy of the left and that acknowledging Trump’s fascism merely makes it easier for sh*t tier “radical centrists” to dominate the political landscape. Maybe we just shouldn’t be relying on people who think imaginary “cancel culture” is the true fascist threat, to correctly grasp what fascism actually is. I mean, what evidence is there that card-carrying members of the Nagle Caucus like Aimee Terese, the hosts of the Red Scare Podcast and r/stupidpol forum chuds know anything about fascism at all, and given how poorly they all seem to understand the left, why would you trust their opinions on any given subject anyway? Maybe it’s time we stop listening to emotional arguments from the Glenn Greenwalds, Matt Stollers and Caitlin Johnstones of the world when it comes to the subject of what is and isn’t a fascist because honestly, when you strip away the righteous indignation, it’s pretty clear that most of these folks are ex-Ron Paul-loving libertarian rejects pushing a left-right “populist” alliance against “the system” that has long since been discredited as a successful strategy – and furthermore, given the intellect of the people disseminating these arguments, it’s fair to say they’re probably not doing so from a position of sincerity and good faith discussion.

I mean, let’s break the issue down to its base components to demonstrate what a pure farce this nonsense really is and why it’s utterly impossible to chalk it up to a simple disagreement of interpretation. Factually, the propaganda positions of the American “liberal” establishment, which is itself littered with reactionaries, social Darwinists and free market fundamentalists, have literally sweet f*ck all to do with the fact that up to thirty percent of the country just openly said they were done with democracy because opposing their political agenda in and of itself made one an illegitimate enemy of the State, and the Volk who define it in their eyes. To point out the crass hypocrisy of a Democratic Party that at times called Trump an existential threat to America and yes, a fascist, only to turn around and approve his military budgets, extend his power to make war and help fast-track his reactionary, free market fundamentalist swathe of judicial appointees, is merely to offer a pointed criticism of the liberal establishment – it says absolutely nothing about whether or not Trump and his administration are indeed fascists; regardless of how much sound and fury with which that criticism is uttered. Even if one legitimately believed that American liberals were themselves fascists (more on this below) that would as well have zero bearing on whether or not the Trump administration is also fascist and arguing otherwise after events like the military tear gas attack on protesters to set up an unhinged fundie photo-op at Lafayette Park, the state-sanctioned revenge killing of an antifascist merely accused of a crime and, I dunno, Stephen Miller’s entire white nationalist immigration policy, makes you look like a cretin and a fool. At the point that Trump’s fascist fulminations and executive orders started to inspire fascist and ethnonationalist chuds to rack up a mass-shooting, stochastic terrorism body count, I think you’ve pretty much lost the ability to argue that the swine emperor’s bark is worse than his follower’s bite

If I sound frustrated it’s because these are extremely obvious truths being openly ignored by a twitchy accelerationist, libertarian “left” currently engaged in a nihilist attack on antifascists because they’re rightfully mad at dishonest, corrupt, warmongering liberals. Furthermore, none of the rest of the reasoning being offered by this segment of the online discourse holds much water when examined with even the most mildly critical eye either; a coup attempt is a coup attempt even if it doesn’t succeed, trying to rig the election is anti-democratic, authoritarian behavior even if ultimately you fail at rigging the election, threatening your political enemies with chud violence is still fascist politics even if those chuds don’t actually take the bait or rather, get caught before they can kidnap the Governor of Michigan. As logical reasoning goes, refuting these arguments amounts to child’s play which in turn makes it very hard to trust the otherwise intelligent people making them. I’m simply not fond of being lied to and gaslit by clearly dishonest actors, regardless of whether or not they call themselves “leftists.” When a Democratic Socialist congresswoman, left wing activists and popular socialist websites have all said that it’s at least reasonable to call Trump and his administration fascist or proto-fascist, you don’t get to argue that anti-fascism and accepting reality are somehow sh*tlib positions. Or at least you shouldn’t expect someone who knows what fascism is, to take that line of reasoning seriously.

Americanism Is A Fascist Ideology

All of which leaves us with only one remaining counter-argument to explore; the idea that Trump himself might be a fascist, but it’s ultimately irrelevant because America has always or at least almost always been fascist and the vast majority of the fascist things he did in his first term have a historical precedent in American politics. I’ll admit that this counterpoint is somewhat persuasive because it’s fundamentally true that as the high church of capitalism, America has always been pretty fascist; we are after all talking about a nation that was not only founded on genocide and slavery, but also wholeheartedly adopted ideology clearly fascist in nature during the Jim Crow period, the first Red Scare and to support anti-communism during the long Cold War. Of course even such an admission does leave one to question whether or not imprisoned socialists, exploited and terrorized African Americans or executed anarchists would agree with the implied corollary that it’s ultimately irrelevant because none of those things turned into the Third Reich; or for that matter if migrants, transgender people and Muslim Americans under the ever-present threat of reactionary oppression in our present day America, would agree either.

More to the point however, this line of reasoning also fails to differentiate the forest from the trees by completely ignoring the context within which Trump was elected and exercised power. No left wing antifascist has argued that Trump sprung up from nowhere, or somehow represents a deviation from pre-existing American reactionary thought. Indeed, I myself have repeatedly written that Trump is at once both a product of and an accelerant for a preexisting fascist ideology that has survived and thrived under a cloak of American exceptionalism woven into the very fabric of the country and its law enforcement structures. America isn’t fascist because it made Trump president; it made Trump president because America is fascist and to pretend the prior embrace of fascist ideology in American history is evidence against the case that Trump is a fascist, rather than evidence for why it was possible for a fascist like Trump to become president, once again demonstrates an almost infantile understanding of both American ideology and how fascism has historically functioned everywhere else on earth. And this is of course setting aside the fact that even if one simply refuses to call Trump a fascist, that doesn’t make the reality that he’s employing fascist political techniques, openly subverting democracy and actively trying to spark a right wing uprising on Twitter in the wake of his election loss, a liberal propaganda conspiracy; these things have in fact occurred completely regardless of what Rachel Maddow says about them and even most of the folks vehemently disputing the use of the word fascist will openly acknowledge this behavior as dangerous, antidemocratic and extremely reactionary. If contrarian left idol Noam Chomsky is out here saying Trump is “the worst criminal in human history,“ how is it liberals scaremongering to then use the word fascism as a broad descriptor even if some consider it semantically inaccurate, ya f*cking brain geniuses?

The simple truth is that neither I, nor any other left wing antifascist are responsible for the disingenuous weaponization of extremely f*cking real fascist terrorism, violence and social Darwinist ideology by neoliberal monster minions who prefer a covert, corporate fascist regime to Trump’s more overt, openly neo-Confederate fascist regime; to imply their selfish appropriation of the words of accusation makes liars and alarmists out of marginalized people who identify and name the fascist threat they’re facing down in real time, is simply to employ more sophisticated forms of victim blaming and guilt by association. The fact that Biden’s ideological positions represent precisely this kind of covert, corporate fascism and by extension a significant danger to the left and the marginalized, cannot be used to re-write history and that’s ultimately why none of the arguments against calling Trump and Trumpism fascist end up holding any water. More importantly, the existence of this covert, corporate fascist threat to antifascists on the left cannot morally be used by the very same people claiming Trump’s overt fascism is a kind of establishment psyop, to gaslight a whole generation of young antifascists and anti-racists into some sort of crypto-fascist anti-establishment political movement backing a cleaned-up chud like Josh Hawley.

To be honest with you, I don’t even really understand what harm reduction means inside a neofeudalist hellscape, I didn’t tell anyone to vote for Palooka Joe Biden, and I too find arguments that anyone is going to drive Biden left after he becomes president both laughable and dishonest. If you’re flat up asking me whether or not a deep understanding of what fascism actually is leads me to believe that Joe Biden is also a fascist, I’d have to say yes; albeit as I mentioned above, Biden would be less a true believer and function more as a facilitator for a sort of covert, corporate, fascist muppet show, that is committed to maintaining a type of false color-blind Jim Crow police state and is highly unlikely to unleash an army of violent street chud terrorists against his political enemies. Is a covert, corporate fascist regime capable of atrocities and genocides? Absolutely; how else would one honestly describe the American-backed, supplied and supported Saudi war of extermination and starvation being conducted against the people of Yemen? A war that I probably don’t need to remind you, was begun under arguably the most popular Democratic president in modern history – Barack Obama.

The problem is none of that has anything to do with whether or not Trump is a fascist, who will leave behind a well-funded fascist movement that just attracted well over seventy million voters, and is actively looking to purge their political enemies from at least public life, if not this mortal coil. The objective facts simply do not give a f*ck about your feelings, including how much the contrarian, crypto-libertarian “left” hates liberals, who are after all, rather easy to hate. Even making an argument otherwise requires one to compartmentalize and distort the historical record of Trump’s rise (and presumed fall) in a way that is fundamentally just not very honest, for what appear to be largely semantic reasons, and at the cost of confusing thousands of people about what fascism actually is.

Which is quite frankly, unacceptable and intolerable from folks pretending to be on the left. Maybe you guys oughta sit down, shut up and crack a book or two before you offer any more opinions on what fascism really is and what it looks like in the openly reactionary Pig Empire. Or I guess you could all keep making total assclowns out of yourselves by pushing reactionary anti-China propaganda and carrying water for fake-populist, fascist trash like Josh Hawley; your call really.