Then it was fascism

Special prosecutor Jack Smith is preparing to end, as has been announced, the federal prosecution against Donald Trump given the immunity enjoyed by presidents. These are the ones that refer to electoral subversion and the illegal withholding of classified documents. Smith had an intense day: in the afternoon, he also asked the judge in charge of the Capitol assault case for a break “to analyze the new situation.” During the campaign, Trump said he would fire Smith “in two seconds” if he was re-elected. Something that has just happened and he only takes office in January, but the mechanism prepared -with the control of Justice- and the gift of the voters who gave him executive and legislative power already set the tone for what comes.

This Saturday, November 9 marks 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the desire for freedom overthrew an entire political and economic system based – theoretically – on the equality of human beings. This week, Americans elected a president – ​​for themselves and for the world – eager to establish inequality as a social organization based on drastic reforms consistent with the so-called Dark Enlightenment that removes barriers democratic to the interests of the elites. Too many changes that are inconvenient for them have been made over these centuries. They are of course not the same as the new aristocracy – business, cheating, money-hungry – that we see in Trump’s team, with Elon Musk at its head and a circle of famous far-right people.

In the countless analyzes that I read to explain the phenomenon, we obscure an obvious fact that is not decisive: these are the citizens who voted for Trump. To a liar, sexist, classist, xenophobic man, convicted of some of the crimes with which he is accused and promoter of the assault on the temple of the sacrosanct American democracy, the Capitol, four years ago when he lost the election to Biden. And he arrives burning with vengeance and eager to establish himself as an autocratic ruler, overturning the essential pillars of what has been known so far in liberal democracies.

Journalist Claudi Pérez, in El País, recalls a key to Trump’s victory that his colleagues at elDiario.es also highlighted: “GDP is not enough to win elections” according to Sáenz de Ugarte, for example. The Republican candidate asked citizens: “Okay, the macroeconomic numbers are better, but are you getting to the end of the month more comfortably or not?” The trap is immense. And in Spain, it works too. Did millions of people seriously believe that with Trump they could make ends meet more comfortably? Do you know what they voted for? I’m convinced not, regardless of the moral laxity involved in choosing a character like this.

The flashback begins, the dark Enlightenment, technofeudalism, the destruction of democracies as we understood them. This is the problem: they have not provided the required solutions and the weariness is great, but choosing the worst option does not seem like very informed people. Is there another one? While we wait four more years and four more years for positive changes for all that are not happening, the far right advances its model as a bait for discontent.

Some very consistent authors like Robert O. Paxton think that “The Trump phenomenon has a much more solid social base, a base that neither Hitler nor Mussolini had.“. In my opinion, it is not so much a social base – and even less informed – but a base that believes in dubious promises, accepting in the package the violation of essential ethical foundations. Educated in frivolity and lack of critical thinking. The first weapon used by Trump during his previous term was lies. He let them go almost every time he spoke, as do the right-wing leaders in Spain, Feijóo or Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the lead. And people buy them without thinking about the consequences.

52% of white women voted for Trump, probably because of racism. And 54% of Latin men because of machismo. What they call “the economy” has also taken precedence over many of the Republican’s supporters.

You have to be very clumsy to vote for Trump “because Biden let everyone in”…being of Peruvian origin. Mass deportations are proposed. They can thus find thousands and millions of people who feel excluded from the threats that make them targets of fascism. The same thing happens in many places, including Spain.

In the 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, globalization, neoliberalism and postmodernism have been overthrown. What is now is an abyss, a step backwards. Extreme right, anti-democratic, reactionary and traditionalist. Nationalist and protectionist in economic matters. This combats gender roles, sexual diversity and migration. It is the antithesis of the Enlightenment. It advocates – as the only “modernity” – the functioning of countries like businesses. Hierarchical, of course. That ordinary people believe they can be among the beneficiaries is truly strange.

So far they have used citizens. If, as Trump warned, they will no longer have to vote, they will no longer need them except to continue using them for other purposes. But gullible citizens are not innocent. No matter how big the disappointment, it takes a little more intellectual curiosity before you swallow everything that’s thrown at you. Because they are throwing out more and more trash for the purposes of disinformation and ideological consumption. Through networking, countless beings without the slightest knowledge of anything have felt empowered to discuss at the level of any true expert. Climate change, for example, poses a huge threat which, for those who baselessly deny it, would mean removing controls… “live better”. Information is not what the first person to arrive counts, it requires verification, an order of priorities, the truth above all. And in fact, its destruction was and remains the great asset of the extreme right.

Spain, Valencia, DANA, causes and consequences, as an example. Knowing the profiles and adventures of Mazón and his government, we even wonder how they could have been chosen to manage the fundamental problems of people’s lives. And the process of lies and contradictions with which they try to hide their responsibility for the aggravation of the consequences of DANA, a real tragedy, is not at all surprising. But the same thing happened in Ayuso’s Madrid during the pandemic. It is true that the interested media manipulate it, but to the point of dissuading reality in such an extreme way? Do they not even learn of the fatal consequences for others?

A very worrying, terrible moment for humanity, this one which is crescendoing because no one is putting an end to it. Orban and Meloni were re-evaluated by Trump’s victory and together imprisoning a European Union that has let fascism into the kitchen and is increasingly acting under its orders. Europe and the traditional parties need deep reflection, but citizens who are not passive subjects of the currents must do even more; they must understand that they are moved by them and often by their own mistakes, the ones that ultimately destroy them. Citizens voted for Trump, as did Mazón. We are the citizens who choose who to believe and how to inform ourselves.

When 5 years ago, a group of authors assessed the changes that occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall (Derribar los libros, Roca Editorial 2019), we noted several ideas:

“What really triumphed in 1989 and in the following years was wild capitalism, which refuses any form of regulation of the primacy of money in the lives of human beings and in the exploitation of the planet’s resources. . “It triumphed universally,” writes Javier Valenzuela. “Everything from the air we breathe, to the water we drink, to the food we eat, to health care, pensions, energy, education, housing, debt, everything has become a commodity subject to speculation on the stock markets. » , underlined Lourdes Lucia. The abandonment of its role by a social democracy which left economic policy “in the hands of neoliberal dogmatists” was denounced, Pérez Tapias

“The press no longer seems to serve to situate society in the times in which it lives, to shed light on democracies and their electoral processes, to guarantee freedom through good information” anticipated Pedro de Alzaga.

We also saw that other walls had arisen before the frightened eyes of survivors on the high seas, in wars, among the victims of unbridled racism, in poverty and in the injustice suffered by millions of people. And Àngels Martínez Castells mentioned Cavafis to deplore those who do not see the future, even if it is in front of them. And they live without hearing the noise that the “masons” make when they build the walls, without realizing that the walls isolate them from the outside world.

There is already another one that is almost insurmountable. Besides Trump and all the other fascists with millions of beings holding up the bricks tied to their bodies and lives to support them. These are the main culprits. Moreover, it is also generally the citizens who shoot them down.