US Supreme Court won’t stop at Roe v Wade
Are the 2020s a rerun of the 1930s? Auden, who was there, called the 30s a low, dishonest decade. The story remains familiar: a worldwide depression was followed by the rise of fascism, which was followed by a worldwide war. The war is seen as a necessary cleansing. The fascist hydra had to have its heads cut off. Like most stories this is too simple. Yes, Hitler and Mussolini lost and died. Yes, the Nuremberg trials punished some of the guilty. Yes, the UN was founded to stop it recurring. But fascism never went away. It never does.
In 1937 Auden and George Orwell joined the Spanish Civil War. Orwell, typically, went to fight; Auden, just as typically, to carry stretchers. Both were on the side of the democratically elected Spanish government against Franco and the fascists. Franco was supported by Mussolini, Hitler and the Catholic Church. He won. He remained in absolute power until his death in 1975.
Fascism is an overused word variously defined, but in essence it is simple. It’s a dictatorship. It’s nationalist, militaristic. It preaches the myth of a glorious past. It likes traditional religion and traditional religion likes it. It demonises outsiders and subordinates women.
By these criteria the world abounds in fascist states. Indeed, you could argue that fascism has always been the default form of human government. There are miniature states like Gloriavale on the West Coast, and there are huge ones like Putin’s Russia, with its brutal boss, its myth of lovely yesterdays, its crushing of dissent and its embrace of the Orthodox Christian church. Or Saudi Arabia, with its inviolable royal family, its military hardware, its state religion and its barely visible women.
Democracy is seen as the best defence against fascism, but fascism is often popular, at least to start with. Both Hitler and Mussolini were elected. Once you’ve elected a fascist, however, it’s hard to get rid of them because the only aim of fascism is power. In 2016 the United States elected a would-be dictator. Trump is too ignorant to know fascism from a banana, but he oozes fascist qualities – selfish, vain, greedy, corrupt and bereft of kindness. A born bastard, in other words, and he made no secret of his admiration for similar bastards like Putin, Xi and Kim. With Make America Great Again he made the classic fascist appeal to a mythological past. And evangelical Christians saw him as doing god’s work. He became the improbable poster boy of white Christian fundamentalism. When voted out of office in 2020, Trump tried to retain power in the best fascist tradition. His coup failed, but not by much.
Had January 6th succeeded every subsequent election would have been rigged to deliver a win for Trump. Or for his son or daughter. And we would have witnessed the textbook fascist takeover of a democratic state.
In one sense the coup did succeed. With Trump as their useful idiot, the shadowy forces of Christian fundamentalism managed to install three stooges on the Supreme Court. We saw the result last week. And they won’t stop there. How they’d love to recriminalise homosexuality.
Anything could happen in the States. There’s a Republican running for governor of Georgia with a campaign motto of ‘‘Jesus, Guns, Babies’’. I am not making this up. The country seems as implacably divided as Spain was in 1936. Even civil war seems possible. Meanwhile, there’s a war in Ukraine between fascism and democracy which shows no sign of ending and every sign of expanding. Anyone for a low, dishonest decade?