Power Grab

by Jason Chaffetz

Trump is America’s Franco: How Fascism Finds a Foothold in Democratic Nations, Paste Magazine, 10/11/16

  How Fascist is Donald Trump? There’s actually a formula for that, Washington Post, 10/21/16

  A Scholar of Fascism Sees a Lot That’s Familiar with Trump, The New Yorker, 11/04/2016

  Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Financial Times, 11/5/2016

  Donald Trump Is Already Acting Like an Authoritarian, The New Republic, 11/14/16

  Donald Trump is actually a fascist, Washington Post, 12/9/16

  Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy? New York Times, 12/16/16

  Donald Trump: Strong Leader or Dangerous Authoritarian? NPR, 12/16/16

  Those are just from the election year. That list reads like one big Democrat PR campaign. And maybe it was.

  To be fair, some of these pieces are opinion submissions. Several of them conclude that Trump is not a fascist, albeit with subheadlines like these from The New Republic: “His ‘movement’ lacks the revolutionary élan of classical fascism, but the repercussions for American democracy are still frightening.” Or this one: “Just days since the election, the worst fears about him are coming true.” Incidentally, this notion that the worst fears about Donald Trump ever came true is patently absurd. It hardly seems possible given the tone and tenor of the fearmongering in the articles on this list.

  Of course, as the articles published in 2016 demonstrate, we don’t necessarily agree on exactly what fascism means. As author Jonah Goldberg deftly explained in his 2008 book Liberal Fascism, “even though scholars admit that the nature of fascism is vague, complicated, and open to wildly divergent interpretations, many modern liberals and leftists act as if they know exactly what fascism is. What’s more, they see it everywhere—except when they look in the mirror.”

  Ruling with Force

  To the extent that elements of fascist philosophy have emerged, they have come from the left. Freedom and fascism are not compatible. When you implement policies that expand freedom, force contracts. When you expand force, freedom is suppressed. And the left is all about suppressing freedom.

  That’s not to say that I equate progressive politics with fascism, socialism, or any other ism. I think such labels degrade our political discourse and leave us with no language to describe the real thing when it emerges. However, I find it ironic that those scaremongering about right-wing fascism are actually themselves promoting policies that employ more force and less freedom.

  The many articles published in 2016 were right about the growing threat of fascist tendencies (not to be confused with outright fascism). They just misdiagnosed the source of those problems. In Democrats’ zeal to stop the perceived authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump, they have doubled down on deploying the very authoritarian strategies they claimed to be trying to prevent.

  Political neophyte Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a Green New Deal that openly seeks to phase out cars, air travel, hamburgers, and access to affordable power. Is there any possibility that this agenda can be implemented without a massive show of force? To make it a reality, government will have to take on new responsibilities—enforcing new restrictions on how we can travel, what we can eat, and what we can sell. Americans will have to accept dramatic price increases in energy, goods, food, and transportation. What are the chances they will do so willingly?

  Nearly every declared Democratic presidential hopeful initially praised this specific proposal and continues to support its broad framework. Not one Democratic senator was willing to vote against it when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put it to a vote. Instead they all voted “present” in the hope of avoiding going on the record.

  There are plenty of other examples of force-deploying policies from the left. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has released a comprehensive immigration plan that would prevent the deportation of over 6 million illegal border crossers. The proposal bypasses Congress completely. Her unconstitutional solution calls for a presidential expansion of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) that would eliminate any requirement for Dreamers to apply for legal status by the age of thirty-one, would raise to seventeen the age at which qualifying applicants could have been brought to the United States as children, and would give Dreamers green cards. All without any input from the lawmaking branch of government.

  Bernie Sanders is supporting a Medicare-for-all scheme that would make private health insurance illegal and centralize the power over every American’s health in the federal bureaucracy. The House version of the bill has 107 cosponsors—half of the Democratic caucus. The bill replaces what’s left of the free market in health care (such as it is) with policies that restrict freedom and expand force. Your freedom to choose a private or employer-sponsored health plan will be taken away. In its typical one-size-fits-all fashion, the government will dictate your health plan, your doctor, your hospital, and your ability to get approved for a procedure. Government will set the prices for drugs, surgeries, and preventive care. This represents a massive expansion of government force with no means for anyone to opt out of the program. This policy encompasses the key components of fascism: centralization of authority and stringent socioeconomic controls.

  Free speech in particular has been under attack from the left. By labeling traditionally mainstream Christian beliefs as racist, homophobic, or bigoted, they seek to marginalize people of faith. Left-leaning progressive nonprofits like the Southern Poverty Law Center clamor to dox organizations that engage in speech they don’t like. Progressives at the IRS targeted nonprofit groups based on their political leanings. Progressive students at college campuses clamor to exclude or disrupt conservative speakers, abridging the freedom of others on campus who wish to hear them. When was the last time we saw conservatives shut down a progressive speaker on a college campus?

  One particularly ironic example is happening in my own state, where progressive groups have demanded that a conference scheduled at Utah’s Brigham Young University in 2023 be moved because of the university’s morality standards. The Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS), an academic organization for scholars of ancient Greece and Rome, initially stood firm against the heavy pressure from progressives. But the group eventually caved, ironically invoking the group’s policies on inclusivity and diversity to justify excluding a university with a divergent view. These are the tactics of authoritarians.

  The first bill introduced by Democrats in the 116th Congress also contains a raft of provisions limiting free speech. As my friend and colleague Senator Mike Lee often explains, Democrats believe anyone is free to publish opinions about political campaigns, but only if they don’t actually own the printing press.

  Some in the media have taken to attacking what they call “bothsidesism”—which New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes as the “almost pathological determination to portray politicians and their programs as being equally good or equally bad, no matter how ludicrous that pretense becomes.” Krugman believes some opinions (apparently, even mainstream conservative ones) are so beyond the pale that good journalists have a duty to shun them. Yes, fascist threads run deep in the fabric of the American left.

  One need look no further than the confirmation hearings of Justice Kavanaugh to find fascism gone mainstream in America. They built upon some of the very same tactics I saw deployed at my last town hall. They were not interested in truth. They were interested in narrative. It didn’t matter what was real, only what could be projected. We saw key players dispense with the battle of ideas, again relying on debate-killing epithets to destroy the opposition at any cost. Truth became collateral damage.

  We saw the divide-and-conquer tactics of identity politics in which men were pitted against women and stereotypes were taken as gospel truth. We witnessed the deployment of nonprofit networks to help stage the show. But most disturbing was the willingness to sacrifice long-standing institutional norms—the presumption of innocence, due process, and the very confirmation process itself—to protect politi
cal power. None of that is compatible with freedom. It’s far more compatible with fascism.

  Again, I’m hesitant to call it fascism, because I think we have been far too careless in our use of that term. We should be reticent to use the word casually. Shame on the Democrats and their media allies for devaluing a term that should be reserved for extreme totalitarian regimes. When such radical terms are employed in the service of petty political battles, we are left with no language sufficiently strong to describe legitimate threats to our republic.

  Nonetheless, if President Trump can be called a fascist for prioritizing border security or objecting too strongly to biased news coverage, then those same standards easily convict Trump’s opposition. Are there threads of fascism in American politics?

  The government has indeed targeted, framed, and in some cases prosecuted political enemies—but they were not the enemies of Donald Trump. Thus far they have been the enemies of the left, ranging from conservative nonprofits to Trump appointees to the president himself.

  The Democratic House under Speaker Pelosi looks to double down on this tactic going into 2020 with an avalanche of new congressional investigations designed to serve as opposition research rather than actual oversight.

  Furthermore, we are seeing proposals to curtail freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights—but again, those proposals are coming from Democrats in Congress, not from the Trump administration. An in-depth look at the priority bills filed by Democrats in the 116th Congress shows an alarming attempt to fundamentally transform American institutions and forever alter our constitutional checks on centralized power.

  In the political realm, we are seeing Democrats attempt to achieve through legislation what cannot be done at the ballot box, with proposals for vast new federal authority over state and local elections and campaign finance rules carefully crafted to do exactly the opposite of what they purport to do.

  We are seeing a weaponization of national consensus on issues like fascism and racism. But perhaps most alarming is what we are not seeing. The weaponization of traditionally apolitical entities, particularly in the nonprofit sector, is invisible to most Americans. But the nefarious practice of using nonprofit charities as fronts for political organizations represents a chilling new battleground in the quest for political power.

  What happens to people who express unpopular opinions in a fascist state? They get suppressed. Leftists once again turn to their time-honored tactic of suppressing debate with anger-inducing labels. Hate speech is the one they use to justify retaliation against ideas they wish to suppress. Where are we seeing suppression of political views in America today? The threat to free speech actually comes from the likes of left-leaning cultural, educational, and media sectors. Technology giants like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and even PayPal have gotten into the censorship game—where errors or overreach almost inevitably fall to the benefit of leftist speech.

  Tucker Carlson called out PayPal in a February 2019 broadcast, pointing out that the online payment platform, upon which many rely for income, has taken to banning users whose speech the left-leaning company dislikes. He explained:

  Last year, PayPal banned Alex Jones from using the platform for saying things they didn’t like. They have also banned anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer, the publication VDARE, and a number of other people and organizations whose speech they believe should be silenced.

  [PayPal CEO Dan] Schulman admitted that his company takes guidance on who to ban from the Southern Poverty Law Center—that’s an entirely fraudulent organization that works as an arm of the Democratic National Committee. According to Schulman, “The line between free speech and hate, nobody teaches it to you in college. Nobody defined it in the law.” Well, that is ridiculous. It is very much defined in the law and has been for 50 years. In 1969, the Supreme Court conclusively decided that hate speech does not exist. But it doesn’t matter to Schulman or any of his allies on the left. To them, the First Amendment is merely a legal obstacle. It’s something to subvert rather than celebrate.

  Granted, fascist elements can be found in the extreme movements of both right and left. The likes of Alex Jones and open white supremacists like VDARE are certainly beyond the pale. We are fortunate to live in a society in which we are free to reject such rhetoric. But when the left, using the SPLC as a metric, gets to decide what constitutes extreme speech, even the most mainstream conservative outlets can become a target.

  There are plenty of fascist policies coming from outside the Trump administration. Trump may occasionally talk the authoritarian talk, but it’s the left that walks the authoritarian walk.

  Branding Trump as a fascist is not about fascism. It’s about grabbing power. Even the Democrats’ most loyal allies in the press know it. Salon cynically warned, “Branding Trumpism Fascist has the political benefit of mobilizing disparate forces in the fight against him just like the antifascist coalition of World War II led to unprecedented alliances between ideologically disparate forces (the Soviet-American alliance being the primary example). In the American context, seeing Trump as a 2016 reincarnation of Mussolini can unite Democrats, Republicans, independents, Naderites, neo-cons, constitutionalists, and others, into a broad anti-Fascist coalition which would bring Trump down and save our democracy.”

  Of course, Democrats aren’t so much focused on saving democracy as they are on saving their own power. They will pay any price—scratch that—they will ask you to pay any price to make that happen.

  Case in point: President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to provide funding for a border wall. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright called President Trump’s use of that authority an example of “fascist” behavior. Prior to the House vote on the resolution blocking the emergency declaration, Nancy Pelosi said, “Perhaps it’s time for our country to have a civics lesson. Our founders rejected the idea of a monarch.” That’s all well and good, except for one problem: Pelosi doesn’t believe in rejecting a powerful executive and neither do her Democrat colleagues in Congress, who uniformly cheered President Obama’s use of pen and phone to avoid traditional checks and balances by the legislative branch.

  The dead giveaway can be found in the resolution blocking Trump’s national emergency. It blocks the president’s ability to reprogram authorized funds in this specific case. It does nothing to rein in future presidents—a move for which there would be strong bipartisan support.

  This is about blocking this president, this time. The last thing Nancy Pelosi wants is to rein in the executive authority upon which Democrat presidents have relied to bypass legislative checks and balances.

  The casualty in all of this is foundational institutions that have been key to the success of the world’s most successful economy. Many of the articles warning of Trump’s fascism warned of potential damage to our democratic institutions. But a more careful look at institutions from the Electoral College to the First Amendment and from the Supreme Court to the Department of Justice shows the real damage is coming not from President Trump’s allies but from his political enemies. Much of it begins in Congress.

  Chapter 4

  Creating False Narratives

  Two years after her devastating defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton stood before a Selma, Alabama, crowd and attempted to explain why she isn’t the president of the United States. She offered one simple reason. “I was the first person who ran for president without the protection of the Voting Rights Act and I will tell you, it makes a really big difference,” Clinton said.

  We have heard Clinton offer a bevy of reasons for her loss, but this was a new one. Affecting her best southern accent, Clinton clumsily attempted to construct a narrative that would conform to the formula her party had successfully used for years. It is a formula that weaponizes public consensus—in this case the consensus against racism—and attempts to cast political opponents as coming down on the wrong side of that consensus.

  She explained that people she referred to as
opponents of the half-century-old law had “found a receptive Supreme Court” that “gutted the Voting Rights Act.” She then proceeded to spin a narrative that attributed her electoral defeat to voters in Wisconsin who she says were turned away from the polls “because of the color of their skin, because of their age, because of whatever excuse could be made up to stop a fellow American citizen from voting.”

  There was a problem with this narrative. It just flat out was not true. The Supreme Court decision to which Clinton was referring, Shelby Co. Ala. v. Holder, applied only to nine states, mostly in the Deep South. It did not apply to Wisconsin. Even Salon, one of the premier outlets for Democratic Party propaganda, called Clinton out. Their story cited legal experts who explained that the key states in Clinton’s loss (Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) were not even covered by the part of the Voting Rights Act the Court had struck down. Eventually the Washington Post fact-checker gave Clinton four Pinocchios for her claim.

  Besides being factually inaccurate on the legal details, Clinton’s narrative was clearly hyperbolic. The effects of the Supreme Court decision were not broad enough to have the impact she described. Such a notion may resonate with progressive voters in America’s Blue cities whose exposure to conservative voters is limited to stereotypes. But for your average American voter who is not racist, the argument that Clinton lost because of racist voter suppression is an outrage. The claim is a way to quickly shut down debate and win the argument without actually having to take a position against election security.

  We shouldn’t be surprised to see Clinton attach herself to this narrative. We have seen not-so-subtle foreshadowing that this narrative will play a huge role in the 2020 election cycle.

  Why else would Democrats choose a failed gubernatorial candidate to offer the party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address? Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams blames her 54,000-vote loss on voter list maintenance or—as she calls it—voter suppression. The fact that her opponent, as secretary of state, removed voters who had died, moved, become inactive (usually because they died or moved), or used names that did not match their government ID is being characterized as an act of racism and suppression. Trotting out Abrams on the national stage was one signal that Democrats will ramp up this narrative for 2020.