It Started on January the 6th
America’s love affair with fascism reared its head once more last night. In D.C. fascists, conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and political agitators stormed and occupied sections of the Capitol complex with minimal resistance until they were ejected some hours later. Of the crowd that entered the complex, one was shot dead and another three have died from (as yet) unspecified causes.
Make no mistake — this is not the crescendo. This is not the end, rather the true beginning. It is an escalation that demanded firm opposition, and found an open door.
Fascism is an ideology built on and fuelled by cowardice — of creeping oppression and violence, always waiting to hit a wall before it retreats. Until it hits that wall, it advances without limit. Here — there was no wall. What little resistance there was vanished, with some already suspecting it was deliberate.
It’s hard not to find those suppositions sympathetic. It’s hard not to look back on the past year in particular (but also the history of civil disobedience, protest, and state mandated violence and reprisals in the US) and feel a surge of indignation. Despite what some talking heads and pundits, both in the US and here in the UK, say — the George Floyd protests were not given an easy ride. Nor have the demonstrations that followed been met with the slightest ounce of patience or tolerance. Pleas for mercy, respect, and equality were met with violence, oppression, intimidation, and incarceration.
What we saw last night was not about justice. It was in no way about fairness, or respect. It was, as it always is, about power and control. The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943) warned against cleaving to empty words and empty ideas in her essay The Power of Words:
“Words with content and meaning are not murderous. If one of them occasionally becomes associated with bloodshed, it is rather by chance than by inevitability, and the resulting action is generally controlled and efficacious. But when empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name, without effectively grasping anything to which they refer, since what they refer to can never have any reality, for the simple reason that they mean nothing.” (emphasis my own)
Capitalised empty words. We know them when we hear them. In my own country, that word is Sovereignty — an empty shell intended to hold a myriad of different meanings and definitions. For some it means independence, standing on our own feet against foreign nations and powers that mean us ill. For others it refers to a vague, ethnic self-determination: the power and the authority to purge your own community of those you feel do not belong. But more generally it is a thin tapestry woven of myths and bad history — vague handwaving towards an unspecified mythical golden age when Britain was powerful and respected, but above all ethnically and culturally homogenous.
I mention this deliberately — I saw the chaos in D.C. and felt echoes rush past me into the near future. An inverted sense of déjà vu.
Fascism does not arrive in jack boots and swish leather coats. It doesn’t come to your door gloved and hooded. It comes with a smile, a coiffed haircut, and a clean suit. Fascism comes to your door and whispers sweet nothings of Freedom, of Nation, of Pride, but also of Enemies. Of Others lurking beyond the borders, plotting against us. Conspiracies and paranoid fever dreams weaponised to disentangle you from your community, and to draw you into theirs. To discredit and silence all dissenting voices until the only one left is theirs.
It does this because it knows its own nature. It knows its road ends in blood — and its most fervent adherents yearn for it. They want that violent retribution. They want to inflict pain and suffering. They want that feeling of power and control. But they recognise others may not be quite so committed. What is needed is a slow conversion process.
First you dehumanise the opposition. Make them unworthy of empathy and kindness. Then you make them an object of hate, of loathing, fear and suspicion.
And then you immunise the converts against violence.
A few scuffles here and there. Minor clashes with counter protestors and police. Jumping and beating the odd minority, the occasional isolated ‘target’. Give them a taste of that power, of that control. From there — you build. You increase the tempo and the frequency. You reach for grander and grander scales and conflicts, always sensitive and aware of potential opposition. If you find that resistance, you back off and wait. Keep pumping out the message until the resistance begins to waver.
Then you go again.
The milquetoast resistance to the occupation of the Capitol complex last night means that this will not end. The American political apparatus has conveyed tacit consent. They have sent a message to every fascist and neo-nazi that dreams of seizing control: “we will not resist”. Some may even comply. Some may even help, out of sympathy with their cause.
What is needed is firm opposition. Firm resistance. A uniform, unyielding rejection of dehumanising, oppressive rhetoric and the violence that follows in its wake. We know where this goes. We’ve seen it before. It has been taught to us in our schools. Drilled into us by our parents, our elders, our communities, and our culture.
But we don’t want to believe it could happen here. We want to think we’re immune to its influences, its creeping infiltration. We want to believe we’re better than that, better than those that succumbed to hysteria and intimidation.
We are not, and have never been, immune.
All that’s left is to resist, and to push back.
