A Facebook friend ends a post with “Heil Biden,” apparently as a joke. It came at the end of a rant about voter fraud and the latest conspiracy about a van in Georgia. I’ve tried to be open-minded about the extremes of political rhetoric — well, mostly — and I understand that I have used the word pro to-fascist to refer to Trump and the word coup to describe his efforts to overturn a legitimate electoral result. I’ve even written a political speech that is a mashup of Trump and Hitler speeches that is terrifying to me in its seamlessness. I think I’m on solid ground with these criticisms, but I am willing to acknowledge that I may have engaged in some hyperbole.
I think “Heil Biden” crosses a line, especially when there is no evidence of the kind of cult of personality that surrounds Trump surrounding Biden, or that Biden would manifest the kind of strongman tendencies Trump has exhibited over the last four years.
I find myself growing increasingly tired of all of this. I am tired of baseless conspiracies and the marshaling of fiction and falsehood as supposed factual data in support of the insupportable. I am tired of people who define freedom as not wearing masks, and who accuse those of us who do of being sheeple or unthinking drones. I am tired of personality cults and the not-so-subtle equating of Trump with nation and the attacks on those who voted against him as being illegal voters, illegitimate voters, somehow less American or not American.
This is not about policy differences. I am willing to debate those and have friends who call themselves conservative with whom I do so. Our discussions are based on an agreed reality, even if our interpretations and personal philosophies take us in different directions.
This is not about civility, either. I find that word distasteful in a political context because it implies forced bipartisanship and compromise without taking into account what is being compromised.
This is about a darkness that has settled upon us, a willed ignorance and superstition. We’ve replaced logic and debate with name calling and conspiracy, nuance with hardened lines. This descent started in the late-1950s, with John Bircherism and the growth of Goldwater and then Reagan conservatism, accelerated with the conspiracies pushed by the right during the Clinton years and just kept growing worse and more dangerous.
The presidency of George W. Bush, with its claims that it no longer had to abide by a verifiable reality and that it could create its own through pure might, brought this thinking into full flower. During the Obama years, the right became fully unhinged, making the conspiracies of the Clinton years seem trifling, and helping create the conditions that catapulted Trump into the presidency.
Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works, told Vox in 2018 that “Fascist politics” is “about identifying enemies, appealing to the in-group (usually the majority group), and smashing truth and replacing it with power.” The goal of this politics is to
get people to disassociate from reality. You get them to sign on to this fantasy version of reality, usually a nationalist narrative about the decline of the country and the need for a strong leader to return it to greatness, and from then on their anchor isn’t the world around them — it’s the leader.
This has been the Trump modus operandi. The Trump years have been marked by attacks on the press, on academia, on science — those institutions responsible for understanding reality and giving each of us the tools for its interpretation. These attacks were levied alongside a claim similar to the Bush team’s: Reality is what Trump decides. If he claims voter fraud, then there must be voter fraud. If he calls COVID a hoax or Chinese plot, then that is what it is and the wearing of masks, the restrictions put in place, the guidelines designed to mitigate risk and limit the number of people who get infected and die are meaningless.
This fracturing of reality has left us unable to respond to a virus that infected more than 14 million Americans with a death toll fast approaching 300,000. Simple preventative measures like wearing masks, keep out distance, and staying home have been transformed into cultural symbols that indicate weakness and fear. The strong do not wear masks. The strong eat indoors. The strong go to church and participate in mass rallies for a man who lost election but continues to raise money and continues to command a kind of personal loyalty unlike anything we’ve seen in American history.
This explains the persistence of claims like one made by several friends on Facebook — and reported on by the conservative propaganda site Newsmax (https://www.newsmax.com/politics/brian-kemp-signature-audit-verification/2020/12/04/id/1000018/) — that a video shows votes being counted after the deadline without monitors present. It explains the statistical acrobatics being performed, the sheer volume of lies and distortions being pushed not just by those close to Trump but by his legions of supporters. And it bodes ill for democracy going forward.
The reality community knows that Biden won fairly convincingly, garnering more than 80 million votes and winning by nearly 7 million. He won more than 300 electoral votes and has since had several recounts and lawsuits go his way. And yet, phrases like “illegal votes” and “Stop the Steal” continue to a clarion call among Trumpists.
Here is Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, last week, tweeting
that the 2020 vote “may be the biggest Presidential theft since Adams and Clay robbed Andrew Jackson I. 1824.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham has attempted to get Georgia to toss out votes, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to acknowledge Trump’s defeat. The easy response is to portray this as a desperate, Hail Mary pass by politicians hoping to keep their party in power. Perhaps it is.
But it also plays to the crowd and fans the flames of distrust on the right. About 70% of Republicans polled the week after the election “do not believe the presidential election was ‘free and fair’”; among those who questioned the vote’s fairness, “78% thought mail-in ballots spurred extensive voter fraud, while 72% believed ballot tampering occurred.”
Two weeks later, the Morning Consult reported a similar result: Just three in 10 Republicans “say the results in Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania — each of which has now certified the election — are reliable. A similarly low share of GOP voters say the overall election was free and fair.” The Morning Consult surveyed 1,996 registered voters nationwide between Nov. 20 and Nov. 23, and released the results on Nov. 24.
This is not a fringe belief. If we extrapolate the numbers, we are looking at 50 million voters who do not believe Biden won fairly, most of whom also believe he didn’t win and remain loyal to the wannabe strongman who currently holds office. These fraud claims have a racial — let’s be blunt, racist — component. They focus almost solely upon urban areas, making the claim that cities with large Black populations are rife with fraud. The racism plays to a belief among Trump’s most loyal base that Black and brown voters are not legitimately American, which makes their votes illegitimate, as well. Hence, the phrase “illegal votes.”
And if Biden won these votes, he therefore cannot be a legitimate president. This belief is, itself, illegitimate. It’s a lie. But it’s rooted in the soil like a weed, and it will spread and crowd out the truth. So while Trump’s coup did not succeed in keeping him in office, it is succeeding in keeping the poison of Trumpism alive. We can expect more “Heil Biden” nonsense, more conspiracies, more attacks on truth and the press, more effort at distorting reality, and more attempts to nakedly grab for power.
In six and a half weeks, Joe Biden will become president. Kamala Harris will become vice president. The tenure of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will be over. But the damage caused by their four years of lies and verbal attacks on opponents will continue. You can bet on it.
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