by Coco Das |
Trump’s lawyer Alan Derswhowitz said, “Every public official I know believes that his election is in the public interest. … and if the president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
In other words, if it’s good for Trump, it’s good for America, because America first, right?
This is the twisted logic of fascists, what members of the press called “remarkable” but is really outrageous and terrifying. If everything Trump does is deemed to be in the national interest, then any legislative or judicial check on executive power is against the national interest and could be considered illegitimate or even criminal. Then think of the chilling intent behind Trump saying Adam Schiff has not “paid the price” for impeachment.
But Dershowitz, who has been a legal defender of fascists for a long time, is no idiot. He is tapping into a deep American chauvinism that spans the political spectrum, the disgusting America First mentality that convinces people of two sides of the same coin: that America should be the most powerful country in the world, and fascism can’t happen here.
Earlier this week, it came out in a documentary about Hillary Clinton that Obama, back in 2016, called Trump a fascist. But shortly before leaving office, Obama said, “We are now all rooting for [Trump’s] success in uniting and leading the country…Everybody is sad when their side loses an election, but the day after we have to remember we’re actually all on one team. We’re Americans first, we’re patriots first, we all want what’s best for this country.”
Yes, it’s a leap to take that logic to the extreme and say a president can act like a gangster to guarantee his own re-election by taking down a political rival if it’s in the national interest, but in essence, how much of a leap is it when order becomes more important than justice, or calls for unity take precedence over sounding the alarm?
Let’s confront something together: in one form or another, the conceit of American interests has led to terrible things for the world, and a deep American chauvinism is holding millions of people back from acting in a way that is commensurate with the danger of a fascist regime in the White House with its finger on the nuclear button. Millions of people who hate Trump have not been made to confront the full danger this regime poses to the future of humanity and the planet itself. More and more of us in the #OUTNOW! movement have to help those millions see that we are not Americans first. We are human beings first, and we cannot and should not separate our future from the future of the people of the world.
If you want to stop this fascist regime based on the logic that Trump is a threat to American democracy, to American power and influence, to American people, there is a place for you in the #OUTNOW movement. If you consider yourself a patriot, you should be in the streets to stop a regime that is blatantly destroying the norms of government and even the pretense of democratic and civil rights.
But there is only one way out of the logic Dershowitz is putting forward. Give up your American chauvinism. Break out of the GTF. Together, in the name of humanity, let us show the world that we refuse to accept a fascist America.