How Opposed To Fascism Are We Really?
Do we draw a line, even when it's hard?
Social Media is currently saturated with outrage about the Zelensky/Trump meeting. Sadly, it's only one scandal in a long list that have played out since Trump took office. Despite only having existed for a month and a half, this administration has already become infamous for flying in the face of basic political norms. So far, Trump has overseen, or actively engaged in, case after case of damaging behaviour, including:
Blocking foreign aid, and putting a critic of this on leave.
Sacking the lawyers from the justice department that prosecuted him.
What we’ve seen so far has many people worried. To anyone that’s even dimly aware of 20th Century history, it seems the fascist playbook is being followed to a tee. Blatantly lying about everything? Check. Building a cabinet of loyalists? Check. Scapegoating minorities? Check. Flirting with extending term limits? Check. The US is not in some full blown fascist regime yet, but students of history will know this sort of thing happens slowly, then all at once. We’re now seeing people sound the alarm that were the US to become a corrupt bastardization of itself, this is how it would happen.
I think the people that are worried about this are right. Sure, gun to my head, I don’t think the US will become a fascist state. Liberty is so embedded into the fabric of the culture, that I find it hard to believe that the hundreds of millions of people that live there will take a change like that lying down. However, when fascism starts to rear it’s ugly head, it’s precisely the time not to be complacent. Free people need to give their way of life the reverence it deserves, and with vigilance. It’s so valuable, so hardly won, and so easily lost, that even a flirtation with authoritarianism should be taken very seriously. When handling a gun, you always act as though it’s loaded, even if you think it isn’t.
It’s heartwarming, then, that so many people are loudly trying to nip this in the bud. My newsfeed is peppered with videos like this, and this. Videos of ordinary people drawing the line in the sand and saying “No, this isn’t how we do things here”. Bar the strange loyalists tying themselves into knots to justify the president’s behaviour, it seems that most people are level headed, and are making a stand for the values of the West. Making a stand against a very worrying turn.
We can all imagine how bad it could get. A world where the select few, holding all the power, use it to keep everyone under their thumb. The masses totally helpless and at the mercy of whatever the powerful decide. Treated like they’re things, commodities, that can be used and disposed of. Imprisoned or told how to live - even told when to die. All while these crimes are justified insincerely to keep up appearances. Those that benefit nodding along and looking the other way because it’s convenient.
It’s a scary picture of an unjust world. It’s also exactly how we treat other species.
I’m not sure I could conceive of a world where we were more fascistic towards other animals than the one we actually live in. We own them totally. We decide when they die. We decide what body parts they get to keep. We even decide when they’re pregnant - and we choose every year. If we saw a government treating it’s people the way we treat animals, making them live their entire lives in cages where they can’t even turn around, we’d have no trouble labelling them fascists. The only reason we don’t see ourselves as authoritarians is because we’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.
When pressed, we make a flurry of bizarre appeals, quickly attempting to justify the harm we cause. We uncritically claim that we’re permitted to hurt them because they’re not smart, as if someone’s intelligence holds any bearing on them being deserving of respect. Were we to see a country round up it’s unintelligent people and lock them in cages, we’d scoff when the government claimed they are justified because these people can’t reason. Even if the people couldn’t talk, we’d think the country a despotic regime - unless of course, the ones they were rounding up were a different species.
We point to our long history of exploiting animals, and claim that it’s a vital part of our culture, as if authoritarianism hasn’t been the part of every fascistic culture. We would reel at someone justifying their total domination of others on the grounds that their culture dictates they have the right to - unless of course, the ones they were dominating were a different species.
We make appeals to nature, claiming that we’re merely doing what homo sapiens has always done, conveniently forgetting the same is true for human on human violence. Justifying hurting someone else on the grounds that it’s what the cavemen did wouldn’t fly with us at all - unless of course, the one being hurt is a different species.
The weak reasons for this echo the weak justifications fascists always make when they want to own someone. This is our god given right. This group is different from us, and so we can do what we want with them. We can do this, and so we get to do this.
We even sheepishly sidestep the conversation the same way beneficiaries of fascism do. We look away when we see footage of factory farming, or change the subject when it comes up. We sometimes galvanise ourselves against discomfort by engaging in performative callousness. We think “out of sight, out of mind”. As long as we’re okay and get what we want, then we won’t rock the boat.
Our treatment of animals is really a litmus test for how seriously we oppose fascism. If we want to know what we’d do when we have total and complete control over someone, we need only look at how we treat other animals. Right now, we’re showing that when the time comes to prove we care about liberty for all, we cave - just like the dictators we so vehemently oppose.
“In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish Novelist.