Vermin. Poisoned blood. I am your savior.
This is the language of fascism. Language that not only “others” minority groups, not only demeans them, but turns them into threats. Turns them into targets. Opens the door to violence.This is the language that has girded rightwing discourse for the last decade, a language of blame and resentment. Of hate and conspiracy. Of neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Va. Of Tucker Carlson blaming liberals (and Jews by extension), accusing us of funding a nefarious put to replace white voters. To replace Whites.
A conspiracy that had deadly consequences in Pittsburgh. In Poway, Calif.
Vermin. Infection. Poisoned blood.
This language has a history, from Italy and Nazi Germany through the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides.
To now. When Israeli leaders use this language to describe residents of Gaza. When the Sudanese army engages in ethnic slaughter, when the Rohingya and Uyghurs face genocidal threats in Myanmar and China.
This is not something that can happen here, right? We’re too civilized. Our democratic culture and structure is too strong.
I have two words for those who believe this: Donald Trump.
As The Guardian reports, Trump has repeatedly used words and phrases like “vermin” and has said “threatened to ‘root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.’” On Saturday, “Trump appeared to double down” — “appeared” being an unnecessary and inaccurate modifier. His language was clear.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done,” Trump told the crowd.
“They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America … but all over the world.
“They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
This is chilling stuff that we have to take seriously. Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination at about 70% in the polls. His closest rivals are at about 10% to 12%, which is negligible. Trump is also in a virtual dead heat with Democratic incumbent Joe Biden — and ahead in some polls. What this means is that nearly half of the American electorate is ready to support a dangerously unhinged racist who has stated clearly that he plans to use the office of the presidency to go after his political opponents and root out the “poison” from the American body politic.
These will include mass round-ups and mass deportations, among other things, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of fascism and authoritarian movements, told CNN. The language is not accidental, she says,
“Dehumanizing immigrants, which is what this language does, is a way to get Americans prepared now to accept these repressions later on.”
It’s not clear we understand this. Ron Brownstein, a political writer for The Atlantic, who joined Ben-Ghiat on CNN, acknowledged the danger while also minimizing it. Voters, he said, are not likely to have the stomach to support a candidate who engages in fascist rhetoric. He says the swing voters who are not happy with Biden at the moment will ultimately vote for Biden — ignoring, I think, the voters who already have said they will stay home. And if they do, those states won by Biden with razor-thin margins. Biden won Georgia and Arizona by less than 20,000 votes, and the results in Michigan and Pennsylvania were close, given the size of the state.
We also need to consider the national vote: Trump won more than 74 million votes in 2020 — a number greater than any other candidate in history aside from Biden. More than 74 million people were either supportive of Trump’s overt fascism, or at least tolerant of it for other reasons.
Basically, Trump can win. And if he does, we can pretend our republican scare strong enough to safeguard representative democracy. They aren’t. Decades of attacks on these institutions have left them in tatters. The threat to democracy is real and we need to acknowledge it. We need to fight against it — even if it means supporting a badly flawed candidate like Joe Biden.
As of now, we are likely to face a Biden-Trump rematch. This is not a case of choosing the lesser evil, but of choosing against evil. Trump represents the worst tendencies of the American body politic: hatred and white supremacy, the romanticizing of violence, greed, and corruption. These are not theoretical worries, and they separate him from any normal candidate in our history.
While Biden is badly flawed — I could list the bill of particulars— he is not a fascist, does not fetishize violence, and he’s not corrupt (GOP efforts to prove otherwise make clear he’s not). Biden is flawed, but not a threat to democracy,.
On the left, there are dreams of a Cornel West presidency. These are just dreams — and dangerous ones, at that. Third parties, under the current structure, tend to function as spoilers, siphoning votes away from teh major parties. They have no chance of winning. The notion of a third-party savior is just a fantasy, a product of a dysfunctional politics that substitutes personality for organizing and activism.
Elections have consequences. In the 2000 election, Ralph Nader likely syphoned off enough votes to swing a state or two to George W. Bush. Bush then lied us into war in Iraq. We can’t afford for the same thing to happen again, not when it might mean a second Trump presidency.