Donald Trump is going to be President of The United States.
Donald. Trump. Is going to be President. of The United States.
Donald FUCKING Trump is going to be PRESIDENT of THE UNITED STATES!
No matter how I say it, I can't make it sound OK. I can't make it sound normal. And, well, maybe that's a good thing. The fact that an openly misogynistic, racist, xenophobe who seemingly cares nothing for rights and liberties; a man who bypassed the usual Republican catchwords for racism ("urban," "tough on crime"), sexism ("traditional"), and homophobia ("family values"), and just let his racist, sexist white flag fly; that such a person is the President Elect of what for better or worse, let's say worse, remains the world's most powerful nation is horrifying. It is rape culture, white supremacy, and jingoistic nationalism all wrapped up in a sad, narcissistic orange package. Oh,
and he's a rapist.
So there is no doubt that Donald Trump was able to motivate American hate. His truest, most faithful supporters from the beginning have been representatives of the ugliest side that America has to offer; the ugliness of American history: of slavery, colonialism,
The White Man's Burden, and so on. No doubt, Donald Trump's base is a frightened, angry, shrinking mass of white people who feel left behind by the progress the nation has made. Make no mistake: they are racist, they are sexist, they do hate foreigners, and they do want violence.
 |
Soothing though it may be, it is dangerous to believe that a meme
like this accurately represents how hate functions under fascism |
It would be very dangerous, though, to assume or believe that this ugliness constitutes the entirety of the threat. To understand the danger, we must understand history. Trump has been rightly compared to fascist, xenophobic, racist, nationalistic dictatorial demagogues of the past, including Adolph Hitler. A lesson we must remember though is that The Holocaust wasn't perpetrated by Hitler alone. Indeed, it wasn't even perpetrated by anti-semitic zealots hoping to cleanse "The Fatherland" of all supposed "weakness." No. Instead, The Holocaust was mostly the consequence of normal people going about their lives in normal ways. They did their jobs. They filled out the appropriate paperwork. They pulled the switches and pushed the buttons. They followed protocol and obeyed the rules. The Holocaust was ultimately the result of normal people, petty bureaucrats, doing normal things at their jobs in accordance with the clearly spelled out rules, then going home to their spouses and children, having dinner, and sleeping well. Social scientists have sought evidence for what made those who operated the Nazi machinery different from those who protected Jews in their homes, and they have found nothing--nothing--that distinguishes them. In fact, worse, The Nazis leaders were careful not to recruit overly-zealous individuals. Those people were too difficult to control, they didn't follow orders. Instead, they needed normal people who could follow orders, fill out paperwork, pull a switch, push a button, sign on the dotted line. The Holocaust was, in the end, a bureaucratic factory organized in line with rational decision making processes derived from the same ideals that the rest of the world used to make products. The Nazis made death, but the process was the same.
Why do I point this out? Why am I recounting this history? Because when we believe that the horrible things that have happened in history are the result of evil, scary people, we make it much easier for those things to happen again. If you believe that normal people can't contribute to horrible results by simply following the rules and behaving normally, you are wrong. It is imperative in times of resurgent fascism (and not just in America, but in Europe and other parts of the world too) that we know that just doing normal things can contribute to horrible results. Most Nazis were just doing their jobs, they weren't even thinking about killing Jews or anyone else because no one person was ever really responsible for that. Someone took Jews from their homes, someone else drove them to camps, someone else guarded them, a bureaucrat filled out the paperwork to move them to the "showers," another put the chemicals in, and another pushed the button, a final one cleaned it out. None of them knew all the steps, many may have even convinced themselves that they didn't know what was "really" going on; they were just doing a simple job,
they weren't killing anyone.
Do you see how easy it is?
Donald Trump is going to be President of The United States, and we have reason to be afraid; afraid for our loved ones and afraid for ourselves. But Donald Trump is only one man and the zealots are always in a minority. What we really have to be afraid of is "business as usual." Fascists thrive on order, bureaucracy, and rational, functional decision making. The real enemy of fascism is thought, questions, and active resistance. "Normalcy" allows fascism to work too damn well.
Please, even if you never do again, for the next four years... Think. Question. Fight. Resist.
