The GOP: Entrenching White Christian Domination

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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown.

Episode 92

Sun, 1/2 1:30PM • 54:04

Thomas Zimmer 00:00

They are united behind the same political angle which is to entrench white Christian male dominance. The pro-democracy camp in America must muster the same sort of energy and the same sort of determination to not allow these people to entrench white male dominance. You can have either a unity and consensus, or you can turn this country into a properly functioning multiracial, pluralistic democracy, but you can’t have both.

Coco Das 00:48

Welcome to Episode 92 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, the first episode of 2022. Happy New Year to you all. This podcast is brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Coco Das, one of those volunteers guest-hosting this week’s episode. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in this country. In today’s episode, I’ll be sharing a conversation I had with Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor at Georgetown University. He focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents. I have been following his thoughtful and provocative tweets, where he has been sounding the alarm on the accelerating attacks of the GOP on democratic rights.

At this time, last year, January 6 was on the horizon. Trump’s Big Lie was already taking hold among millions of people, and for months, refuse fascism had been sounding the alarm and organizing ongoing, sustained nonviolent protests to change the trajectory of Trump’s base, marauding through the streets, while the decent people hid in their safe spaces. This is a situation that still needs to be transformed. As long as the fascist threat looms, it is up to all of us to understand and act to stop fascism from consolidating in this country. Refuse Fascism will continue to bring you these conversations and our analysis of things as they develop.

Coco Das 02:25

Now I have a confession to make. I love celebrating a new year, making new year’s resolutions and imagining how to bring a much better future into being. I love that the year is unwritten and that all of us can play a decisive role in shaping it. The new year means that many things have not happened yet — and I love the power of that little word, ‘yet’.

This new year, I want to invite you to make a collective resolution to think more deeply, critically and scientifically about why the world is the way it is, and how we can and must bring a better world into being. Let’s dig into some hard questions together. Why is fascism rising all over the world? Why does inequality and the climate crisis keep getting worse? What is this system of capitalism imperialism that we live under? And can this system be reformed? Or to put it another way: Can we achieve under this system the kind of democracy that many of our guests have argued for on this podcast?

Coco Das 03:41

Let’s resolve to get into some hearty debates, to challenge ourselves and each other to look beyond what is on the surface, or what we’re told is conventional wisdom, and get to the root of the problem. In a sense, we do need to reach across the aisle. Not to fascists for whom, as the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian put it: “a defining characteristic is their fanatical allegiance to demented distortions of reality, which is extremely difficult, and in many cases impossible to penetrate with reason and fact. Because these distortions serve to reinforce their sense of threatened entitlement, and render long standing prejudices and hatreds, even more virulent.” We do need to reach across the aisle to all the decent people who recognize the dangers we face and long truly for a better world, but who are being led into passivity, nihilism, narcissism and fatalism. When in fact, we in our millions have the potential in this historic time to wrench a far better world from the one that we have. But not without struggle, and not without challenging ourselves and others.

Coco Das 05:06

I’m very pleased to be talking now with Thomas Zimmer. He is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, where he focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents, you can follow him on Twitter, @TZimmer_history. Thank you for being here. Thomas, it’s really good to talk to you.

Thomas Zimmer 05:28

Thank you for having me.

Coco Das 05:29

So let’s jump in. I really appreciate the sort of agitation you’ve been doing on Twitter, sounding the alarm on this present moment and what’s going on. I wanted to quote a little from some of your tweets, and have you expand on some of what you’ve been saying. One thing that you pointed out recently is that the slide into authoritarianism in this country has actually accelerated in 2021. You may or may not agree with what the writer Paul Street, who is my colleague on the Editorial Board of Refuse Fascism said recently, he said it oddly feels like the GOP is still in power, even with Trump and Pence out of the White House. You’ve also said that we’re running out of time to stop it, and just hoping for the best won’t be enough. I’d like you to talk a little bit about this. What do you think is causing this acceleration instead of the retreat that many people expected with the Biden presidency?

Thomas Zimmer 06:30

I think there was always going to be a danger that too many people would look at Biden being elected, and conclude that things are fine, that the system worked, that Trump was just an accident and aberration. But things are not fine, and voting Trump out was never going to be enough. I think it was pretty clear when Joe Biden took office that unless the system was fundamentally democratized, we would soon reach this point. I think we’ve gotten closer to that, where it would become impossible to stop America’s slide into authoritarianism; at least to stop it through elections. I think as 2021 is almost over the system has not been democratized in the slightest.

Where I see the the slide into authoritarianism, accelerating is precisely because on the American, right — it’s a broad term, it means the Republican Party, conservative intellectuals, reactionary intellectuals — the conclusion they have drawn from the 2020 election is that they have to entrench white Christian male dominance by whatever means and as quickly as possible, right. So I think the sort of the siege mentality on the American right, the feeling of having their backs against the wall, feeling of losing against what they perceive is sort of an onslaught of quote, unquote, radically unAmerican, leftist, liberal, whatever forces, that want to turn the country into something that they think it must never become, that want to turn the country into a multiracial, pluralistic democracy that want to change the country from what they believe it has to be a white Christian — a nation of and for white Christians, first and foremost — by whatever means. That is what we see wherever Republicans are in charge on the state level. So to believe, just looking at Joe Biden being president, and sort of following from that, that we are fine, that would be extremely dangerous, extremely superficial, and both sort of analytically as well as politically exactly the wrong conclusion to draw.

Coco Das 08:29

Coming back to this moment, you’ve been digging into the work of some of these right wing “intellectuals.” It reminded me a lot of some chapters in The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Coons, where she goes through all the different institutions and how the society was transformed. It’s a pretty terrifying thing to dig into. I really appreciate the work you’re doing there. Can you talk a little bit about the Claremont Institute? What is their role in the shaping of the current moment?

Thomas Zimmer 08:59

It’s really worth looking at these reactionary conservative right wing intellectuals, because I think what you see in what they are saying and what they are thinking, you can get a really good a window into what is animating the anxieties and the energies that are fueling the right-wing political project. One specifically interesting group is these people affiliated with the Claremont Institute, which is a conservative reactionary right-wing Institute, a think tank, based in California. What is interesting about them is they are the sort of most openly pro Trumpian strand of conservative thinking.

There are other interesting strands that are maybe not so explicitly pro Trump, but these people are all in on Trump. They’re all in on Trumpism. If you look at how their thinking has evolved since the 2020 election, what you see is a process of radicalization, you have People like Glenn Alamos, for instance, who I think is a fellow at the Claremont Institute. This guy, he wrote a piece in The American Mind, which is one of the journals or magazines or sort of the platforms of the Claremont Institute. He basically says, flat out says, Look, more people voted for Joe Biden, then for Trump, but that doesn’t matter because these people are not American. They should not be considered American, because — I’m paraphrasing, but this is explicitly in the text, He basically says — Joe Biden represents a radically unAmerican political project, which is not just a political opponent, but a fundamentally illegitimate political faction, a radically unAmerican political faction that wants to turn this country into something it must never become, that is not America.

So if you voted for that, you have basically forfeited the right to even be considered a member of the body politic. He explicitly says: I think over 50% of the electorate should not even be considered American, right? I don’t think you need to know much about history to understand how radical and how dangerous that sort of rhetoric and that sort of thinking is. Once you start excluding people from the body politic, I mean, look, what’s the next step, that basically means you also forfeit all the rights and all the protections that come with being an accepted member of the body politic. But that’s where they are, they’re openly anti democratic, they’re very blatant in their sort of disdain for democracy. And more than that, they are very clearly sort of saying we are the minority. They’re not claiming to be the numerical majority, right? There’s a big shift here from even a few decades ago, when these sort of conservative intellectuals would usually claim to be speaking for a moral majority or a silent majority, right? They’re not doing that anymore, they are acknowledging, more people voted for Joe Biden, but that’s exactly what makes them sort of more aggressive, not less aggressive. They’re not willing to grapple with the fact that oh, okay, so maybe we have to either moderate or we have to sort of find a consensus. No. Nothing. They’re basically saying: Look, numbers don’t matter. We are the only proponents of “real America” — again, by which they mean a white, Christian, patriarchal understanding of America — so we have a right to rule and to dominate in this country.

Basically, what they say is, if democracy doesn’t grant us that right anymore, then democracy has to go. And the people who vote for democracy, or for the Democrats specifically, they have to go too; their vote doesn’t count, it doesn’t matter. It’s a radically anti-democratic, it’s a radically anti pluralistic vision. And again, it’s radicalizing precisely because they acknowledge that they’ve lost the 2020 election. I think what we always need to ask ourselves is: How are they justifying the radical, radically anti– Democratic agenda that they are sort of propagating? They’re justifying it by basically creating this supposedly radical leftist threat that is out to destroy the country.

So, if you are the sole defender of real America, if you are the sole proponent of real America, which they claim to be right, then you have every right to defend America by whatever means. That’s basically sort of where these people are. What is really interesting is how openly and how blatant they are with that diagnosis, which is something that has shifted over the past few years. Those anti-democratic tendencies and impulses, they have been there for a long, long time, that’s not new, but the radicalism and the openness with which that is now put out there by these reactionary intellectuals is very — I mean, I can say, interesting, but it’s honestly — frightening is what it is.

Coco Das 13:49

It’s sort of interesting to me to how that it’s contradictory to the big lie strategy of Trump, where they are still trying to convince people — or maybe they’re not, maybe you have a different take on this — that they are the majority, they did win the election. It seems like there’s a contradiction between these two. I don’t know if you have any comments on that, and what role that’s playing or is it going in one direction, rather than the other? Or do they mutually reinforce each other?

Thomas Zimmer 14:20

I think you’re absolutely right. It’s a different strand, but of the same political project. So Trump’s version, where a narcissistic deranged version of No, no, I got more votes, everyone loves me. That’s not what these reactionary intellectuals are saying. They are not talking about the election being stolen. They are talking about: No, more people voted for Biden. What we need to acknowledge here is they end up in the same place. The important thing is that they end up in a place where they declare democratic — so capital ‘D’ Democratic — governance is fundamentally illegitimate.

At the end of the day, it does not matter whether the Democratic governance and the Biden presidency and Democrats being in charge, or the left being in charge, if that is illegitimate because the election was actually stolen and there was voter fraud, or fake ballots, or Chinese ballots or whatever, they’ve come up with, any of these conspiracy theories, it doesn’t matter whether it’s illegitimate because of that, or it’s just illegitimate because, again, Joe Biden is the leader of a radically un–American, leftist threat to real America. They end up in the same place and they really don’t care. The American right does not really get all tied up in this conspiracy theory or that. Many of them are mutually exclusive. Some of these conspiracy theories are not consistent. I’ve been calling it sort of the “higher truth.”

All of these conspiracy theories and this sort of reactionary thinking it all adheres to the “higher truth.” The “higher truth” is, Democratic governance is fundamentally illegitimate because it’s un–American, it’s radically un–American, and it’s a threat to real America, so it cannot stand. So an election won by by Joe Biden, the result must not stand. They go backwards from there. They do not start with an assessment of how the election was actually conducted, and then they think, oh, there’s something fishy going on. They start with the result, and the result is illegitimate, because again, it’s “un–American,” and so they go backwards from there. I think they realize that they are basically united behind the same political project and the same political end goal, which is, again, to entrench white Christian male dominance, they are pretty united behind this, and that’s what matters to them.

Coco Das 16:40

I wanted to end this sort of segment of the questioning with one of your tweets in a very important thread that you did — we’ll put it in the show notes. You said: “We must face the fact that the radicalization of the Republican Party has outpaced what even most critical observers imagined. And we need to grapple with what that should mean for our expectations going forward, and start thinking about real worst case scenarios.” I don’t think we need to go into those scenarios right now, but I definitely think that this is something that people need to confront.

I wanted to go into something else that you raised, this question of stability. You talked about how the GOP this Trumpist party, now it feels like their back is against the wall, because actually the majority is not for them, and society is changing. You made this point about stability that I want to get into a little bit with you. You wrote, “In US history, the price for this kind of racial, cultural and social change, or progress, has always been political instability, because demands for racial equality and social justice are an inherently destabilizing to a social order that’s always had white men at the top. This unfortunately leads a lot of people who may not necessarily have strong ideological ties to the right, or may not think of themselves as conservative, to nevertheless lend credence and legitimacy to the reactionary political project in the name of stability.” This is a really important point and concept to grasp. So maybe you can talk a little bit more about what you mean by this, and can you give a few examples of how that kind of progress is destabilizing?

Thomas Zimmer 18:28

I think it’s very important to grapple with the fact that the stable periods in American history, the periods that were not characterized by “polarization” or partisan divide, or whatever it is, that were characterized by, “consensus,” the consensus periods in American history, were the periods when an elite white consensus was in place to leave the basic structures of white male dominance basically untouched. Whereas, the periods in American history when, for whatever reason, that consensus was challenged, when this sort of white male elite consensus got under pressure, those are the periods of American history where we see polarization or instability.

The best example really is the 1960s. Because the “instability” resulted from the fact that one party — or it’s specifically one wing of the Democratic Party at the time, because the Democratic Party in the 1960s was a weird coalition between relatively sort of racially liberal northern Democrats and the Dixiecrats or the South, which were just white supremacists, but the sort of relatively again racially liberal wing of the Democratic Party — decided in the 1960s to support civil rights for Black people, and to support the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s.

They basically abandoned that white male elite consensus. That is the beginning of the enormous partisan divide that now characterizes American politics. It starts there. It starts with one party deciding that they were going to support civil rights. Because, again, the American political system, the American cultural system, the American social system, it’s all been built — always been built — on ideas of white dominance; of white male Christian dominance. If you want to turn that into something that is not dominated by white male Christians that is inherently destabilizing. You see this out there sometimes: Oh these activists, these crazy lefties, these woke people, all this instability and destabilizing and take it easy and take them slow.

No, look, that’s just the basic fact of American history is you cannot have actual racial social progress without instability, because if the system is built on white male Christian dominance, then any kind of actual social and racial progress will destabilize the system. That’s just the way this works. I’m obviously not the first person to say that Martin Luther King said in Letter from Birmingham Jail, the problem is the white moderate thinks he can always tell us to go slow and go easy and whatever. The people who are constantly talking about oh, we need consensus, and we need unity, and we need stability. They need to grapple with the fact that you can have either unity and consensus, or you can turn this country into a properly functioning multiracial, pluralistic democracy, but you can’t have both.

Coco Das 21:35

I really agree with you. I think that even going back to Frederick Douglass, his famous quote, “If there is no struggle, there’s no progress.” That quote, goes longer. We’ve used it in the past; it’s a very instructive quote. Also, another example of this kind of instability you’re talking about is the Civil War, which the specter of civil war is, I think, hanging over us at this moment. You provoked a lot of thinking with this. I think it’s something that our listeners should just keep getting into more, and I’d love to have you back at some point to talk more about this.

One of the reasons that Refuse Fascism was organizing to build a mass nonviolent protest movement was one, recognizing that no social change, positive social change, has ever come in this country without that kind of struggle, and that Fascism is also destabilizing; it’s one of the ways that it comes to power by tearing up the norms, and destabilizing the institutions and society, which is why Trump actually was able to galvanize this movement and lead this because he was the one willing to actually really go all out to tear up these norms.

We recognize that without a mass nonviolent protest movement, that really creates a profound political crisis that you get from people filling the streets day after day, week after week, like they done in Puerto Rico, South Korea, Egypt, Tunisia, Armenia; especially in 2017, 2018 this was happening, all over the world. That same desire for stability that these other forces of the ruling class have that you’re talking about, that is compelling Democrats to concede and conciliate right now with these fascists, could actually make them concede to the people instead because you’re weighing one political crisis against another. We always said that the people in our millions need to stand up in our way, standing up for our values, non-violently.

The point is that it really matters who’s in the streets, for who and for what and in what way, what you’re struggling for what you’re fighting for. And I just want to read a little bit from our call this is back in 2018. “A determined struggle that doesn’t yield and won’t be provoked, can create a serious political crisis. This would shake millions awake, the whole world would take heart those in power, who are themselves now under attack by the regime, but conciliating with it would be compelled to respond to our struggle from below, leading to a situation where this regime is removed from power.”

I also think that the system is in real trouble. There are very deep crises and divisions, what the American Empire and the system of capitalism, imperialism that’s governing the whole world right now. The norms that have governed the system for the last 50 years are not holding, you’ve got the intensifying climate crisis, the refugee crisis. The GOP as part of this global fascist movement wants to resolve through genocide, enslavement, and apartheid, basically, and the Democrats don’t have any real answer for. I think out of this very fraught time, people do need to wrestle with what kind of future they want, which is why I really appreciate you calling out this end goal. Do you want to I live in a white Christian ethno state which can only be enforced through terroristic violence and apartheid and genocide? I mean, it can only be enforced through that kind of violence.

Thomas Zimmer 25:14

I would say a few things, because you talk about crisis, I think it’s so important to think about this current moment in American history as a period of transition. Transition usually, is that period of crisis, right? We are experiencing a crisis of you can call it neo–liberalism, perhaps you could call it the neoliberal order. I don’t think the label matters all that much. The sort of the operating principle that has governed the past decades — and not just on the right, not just on the Republican Party, but very much also on the Democratic establishment — it’s come under pressure, and that sort of situation will have to be resolved one way or the other.

The problem is, and I think not enough people realize this, it’s really an open question as to the direction into which this is going to be resolved. It could be resolved into America becoming a properly functioning, multiracial, pluralistic democracy, that is one option. Again, to give you the glass half full kind of reading that I have on the situation is that the country has never been closer to actually becoming a properly functioning multiracial, pluralistic democracy; because again, the country has changed, right? There’s been demographic change, cultural change. The country has become less white, less Christian, less conservative, more liberal.

So there is a chance to achieve that breakthrough, and finally, for the first time, right in American history, realize that promise of multiracial, pluralistic democracy, but there is also a very real chance that that is not the direction into which this situation of crisis or transition is going to be resolved, and that it is going to be resolved by — you formulated maybe a sort of more drastic, almost sort of worst case scenario, right, including mass violence and genocide, and I completely agree, we have to grapple with those scenarios, but what I think might actually happen over the sort of medium term might not involve necessarily that level of violence, but — more a sort of a reversal to what America was, until quite recently, until at least the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, which is basically a country that was fairly, somewhat democratic, maybe on the federal level. Certainly quite functioning well as a democracy if you happen to be a white man, but something else for people who are not white men, and also something else in large parts of the country on the state level, wherever Republicans are in charge, basically, they are, right now, deliberately trying to erect stable one party regimes, right one party rule systems, where they would be in charge, we would still have elections.

So this might still look on the surface, it might still have some of the softer trappings of democracy, will have elections and whatever. But what it’s actually becoming is a sort of a stable one party rule systems in about half the states basically everywhere Republicans are in charge. That would turn the country into a sort of a dysfunctional pseudo democratic system on the national level, and then on the state level, basically divide the country into blue states, in which we maybe have sort of somewhat properly functioning democracies, and red states in which we have something entirely different, which would have to be called something like apartheid regimes basically, right? That doesn’t even necessarily have to go all the way to those scenarios that you laid out, but it’s not great. Everyone who prefers to live in a properly functioning democracy should really grapple with the fact that that’s not alarmist. That’s not unheard of. That’s just what used to be the historical reality in this country until quite recently, and we are well on our way of turning the clock back to that historical reality. That’s just something that we need to grapple with that we that we need to acknowledge.

Coco Das 29:06

Yeah, even just going backwards would be horrific. Because yes, you know, in that period, you had the mass lynchings of black people you have, you know, women who were forced into back alley abortions. The thing that I think is different is that this GOP and Trumpism is also very revanchist, it’s bent on revenge, which I think gives it a particular dangerousness, and also in the way that it’s sort of unleashing these mobs and deputizing people like with SB8, the abortion law in Texas. You’re correct to point out that what I’m saying about a genocide and apartheid is not inevitable.

Thomas Zimmer 29:48

None of this is inevitable. There’s never been a moment in history where anything was inevitable. We should not sort of allow ourselves to sort of fall into a politics of despair, where we’re basically just giving up because it’s all going to hell anyway, and they’re winning and whatever. Let’s not do that. And look, by the way, I am more pessimistic now than I’ve ever been over the past few years, including the entire Trump presidency. More pessimistic now about the fate of American democracy, but I think it’s important to really acknowledge that the reason why the American right is radicalizing against democracy, right now, the reason why they are on this fascistic pathway, is not coming from a place of strength. It’s actually coming from a place of weakness, right, it’s actually coming from the realization that they are losing. That is their diagnosis that they are losing. It was basically also why they have sort of united behind Trump.

All these conservative intellectuals and reactionary thinkers that we touched on earlier, many of them said in 2016, ah, we don’t like Trump, the person, we don’t like the man, and he’s disgusting, is despicable, whatever, and many of them still claim to believe that about Trump, but what they’ve all said was, look, we are losing — and in their imagination, that means real America is losing — so what we need now is someone who just fights back by whatever means, who does not care about norms and precedent and whatever, just fights back. The term that you found in the sort right wing intellectual circles in 2016, was we need a bruiser, we need a brawler.

That’s how they came to Trump, where they basically said, Look, he’s terrible, he’s despicable, but that’s exactly why he is the right man for this moment, where we just need someone to fight back by whatever means, someone doesn’t hold back, someone who doesn’t care about norms. That’s sort of the rationalization that led them to this place. There is a glimmer of hope in there because they are reacting to something real. They are not making up the fact that the country has become less white, less conservative, less Christian, right? They’re not making that up. Those are facts. That’s demographic change, that’s cultural change.

If we can sort of weather this current authoritarian onslaught, if we were able to actually turn the system into a functioning democracy, if we were able to democratize the system properly, then America might come out on the other side of this as a properly functioning democracy for the first time in its own history. So there is a glass half full kind of reading here, but it’s just important to grapple with the fact that it might not work out just sitting there, like fingers crossed and hoping for the best. That’s not going to cut it. That’s not going to be enough because on the American right, these people are determined they are true believers in their vision of America. They are utterly determined to entrench and preserve white Christian dominance by whatever means.

The challenge is, can sort of the pro-democratic camp and I’m not just talking about the Democratic Party, I’m talking about everyone who prefers to live in a democracy, can the pro-democracy camp in America muster the same sort of energy, and the same sort of determination to not allow these people to entrench white male dominance? That, I think is the question that we are facing. And as of right now, I don’t see that unfortunately, in sort of the pro-democracy camp, I see a lot of still clinging to the idea that it cannot happen here. And it’s not going to be that bad and whatever. And that’s not going to be good enough.

Coco Das 33:22

I think it’s not enough to just say that we’re the majority, we have to show it. People saying with this passionate intensity, hell no, we’re not going to let this vision come to life. Something that was in our call early on is moving heaven and earth to stop fascist consolidation. That’s a prerequisite for wresting any kind of positive future for not just people in this country, but for all of humanity, because we had an analysis that somebody like Trump with his finger on the nuclear trigger, at the head of the most powerful country in the world was a danger to all of humanity. So, let’s talk about words and labels. So do we call this fascism or not? And why does it matter? Does it make a difference to how people act to stop it? So I thought I’d let you go first on this question. And then maybe we’ll go back and forth a little bit.

Thomas Zimmer 34:14

First of all, you’re talking to a historian. So I have a specific perspective on this, which is the perspective of a scholar, someone who is just trained to look at it historically, it’s important to acknowledge that there is no clear cut consensual definition of what Fascism is, at least not amongst scholars. If you ask the question, is it fascism? A lot depends on what definition you want to employ. I think there’s different sort of plausible definitions out there. I think we should also acknowledge that there are different dimensions to this debate, right? There is sort of the analytical dimension of the debate, which basically asks, is it sort of plausible empirically to call this fascism, and does it contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon? So that’s sort of the analytical question, but there’s also a political debate around the term, which asks, I think a different question, which is, isn’t politically useful, and to whom and to what end, to call it fascism.

It’s really important to acknowledge that these two levels sort of the analytical level and the political debate, they overlap, but they’re not the same. At some points, they might be somewhat in tension with each other maybe, and that’s okay. It’s really important to understand that there are two different levels to this debate, and they’re not necessarily directly correlated. Although, I will say right away, I’m not principally concerned with calling it fascism or not fascism. I’m more concerned with getting the analysis, right. Then if someone wants to say, but to me, that qualifies as fascism, fine. I would say, yes, it’s fascism, or it’s close enough, or it’s dangerously close.

I see good reason to call Trump and Trumpism fascistic, or call it fascism; a specifically American, specifically 21st century version of fascism. It’s important to be specific about what are we talking about. I would not call the entire American, right fascist. I would call certain elements, certain movements, certain ideas, and certain people on the American right, fascist or fascists. I want to make it very clear, I’m not using the term in a sort of a moral judgment sense. When I say something as fascist or not fascist, that does not translate to Oh, it’s not bad enough to be fascist. For me, analytically speaking, it’s not a scale of 1 good to 10 Fascism is the ultimate evil. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m just saying it’s different. It might be really, really bad, it might just be different.

So specific elements, Trump/Trumpism, that, to me, clearly deserves the label fascism. It’s important to describe how that is rapidly spreading, how it has rapidly gained influence within the Republican Party, and how conservative elites, reactionary elites, religious conservatives, plutocratic elites, are willing to make common cause with that specifically American version of fascism, again, united behind the same political project of entrenching wealthy white male Christian dominance, basically. The danger is precisely that we have these fascist elements and people and movements, and we have the sort of religious reactionaries and reactionary conservative elites that I would not call fascist, but it’s precisely the fact that they are willing to make common cause with the fascists, and that they are all too willing to go into an alliance with those fascists, because they feel like they’re united in this struggle against the “radical left.” That’s basically how I would see it.

Very important to me, because I get this a lot on Twitter when I do these super long threads where I try to really sort of delve deep into the white Christian nationalism, and its history, and then someone just says: Hey, man, just call it fascism and be done with it. I’m like, look, here’s the thing, just saying fascism does not mean you’ve done the work, and sometimes not using the term fascism can still mean you’re doing the work and vice versa. I’m just saying, I would strongly suggest let’s not focus too much on the labels, we have to get the diagnosis right. We have to understand the threat. We have to understand where it’s coming from, what’s animating it, but I would not call the entire American right fascism, because again, that would mean to me obscuring rather than illuminating the ways in which these fascist movements and these conservative reactionary elites are sort of going together and sort of colluding.

Coco Das 38:37

Thank you. That was very thorough, I really appreciate that. I think there’s a lot of overlap with how we see this. We also don’t call all the American right fascist. I mean, it really was the ascension of Trump and Pence to the White House that sparked this particular analysis. There are a lot of people who are using the word fascist now. Fascism scholars who saw parallels, but actually still don’t know what to do about it. I really appreciate what you’re saying about doing the work of the analysis and really understanding the danger. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I do share what we use as our framework for fascism that on the website: “Fascism is not just a gross combination of horrific reactionary policies. It is a qualitative change in how society is governed. Once in power, fascism’s defining feature is the essential elimination of the rule of law and democratic and civil rights. Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive reinstitution of oppressive, ‘traditional values.’ Truth is obliterated, and fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed, to build their movement and consolidate power.”

Then, in my research, there’s just a few other things that I think are important: The way that one group is legitimate and everyone else is inherently criminal, how group after group is demonized, and also the anti communism and the anti Marxism. You have Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene obsessed with communists. Why is that? That goes very deeply into the origins of fascism. Where I do think it matters, though is where people are seeing everything as sort of separate parts of the elephant, and they’re not it as one program. I think the way that you’re putting together into one program of aiming at this white Christian ethno state is very important.

Thomas Zimmer 40:36

Maybe if I can just add one more thought on this. The fascism debate has been going on for quite a few years now. I think it’s really interesting how, initially in 2016-17, there were a lot of fascism scholars who were kind of reluctant to use the term fascism. It’s interesting that many of them have sort of come around to actually now using it. I think January 6th, the attack on the Capitol, was certainly an important point there, where I feel like you could see this off the debate shifting. People like Robert Paxton, who is probably the best known fascism scholar, I guess, he specifically in 2017, or so said — and by the way, he also he never said Trump wasn’t bad, he just said, I think it’s something different — but now he’s shifted to: No, look, I’ve seen enough, I think we should call that fascism.

There is a certain fascistic sort of way of describing the problem and a fascistic solution that Trump and Trumpism are favoring. They see the country in decline, which is always important for fascist movements. They see it threatened by outsiders, immigrants, un-American forces that are already here. And now, during the pandemic, they spoke about diseased outsiders, right. They have a deeply exclusionary idea of the nation, and they think the nation has to be purified. Trump has this idea, and trumpists have this idea that only one man can do this job of purifying the nation and he’s destined to lead the nation back to Glory — has to be a man, by the way, always a man, of course.

Again, any kind of opposition is seen as fundamentally illegitimate. It’s a deeply anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic project, and it involves an open embrace of violence. So, if you have all these elements, do you have to use the term fascism? I don’t think so. I know people who are some of the best scholars on the American right on white Christian nationalism, who at least, they will use the term, but they will not foreground it necessarily, in their analysis. I think it’s not helpful to be sitting here and say, we agree on basically everything, but I’m saying, maybe in my analysis, I’m going to foreground, the white Christian sort of patriarchal nationalism, and you want to foreground maybe the fascism, then suddenly, we decide we’re not on the same side anymore. I think the struggle is way too serious, and a threat to American democracy is way too serious to let that kind of debate get in the way of what we’re trying to do here.

I still maintain it, we should be somewhat judicious in our use of the term fascism. As I think we should be judicious in every term we use. I’m not an activist. I’m an historian. So I’m just trying to do what I’m trying to do what I what I think I can contribute to the debate, which is to think about these things historically grounded. But, again, the political debate over the use of fascism, is it useful? Is it useful to mobilize people? Is it useful to get people to understand the level of threat? Or, there are also people who say, no, it’s actually not politically helpful. It might just sound like hyperbole or whatever.

One last thing, the worst thing we could do is use the term fascism to sort of tell this sort of aberrationist tale of Trumpism that is so foreign to American history, something so foreign, something so new, something so different, that we have to sort of use a term from sort of Europe’s interwar period, because Trump is so un–American. I see that sometimes. I see people basically use to fascism label, to almost sort of define Trump out of American history, out of the continuities and traditions of American history. That would be the worst thing we can do. I’m fine with using the fascism label. But that does not mean Trump doesn’t belong in American history. It means fascism belongs in American history. It means we have to look for these fascistic, fascist traditions and continuities that have always been present on the American right, that have always been part of the American right. There is a domestic fascist tradition in America, and that is what we need to sort of grapple with.

Coco Das 44:38

Yeah, I think that actually also embodies a misunderstanding of fascism. All fascist movements, reach into the divisions and oppressive systems of that society. So, like in India, Modi, the Hindu fascist, you know, he’s able to capitalize on those fascistic roots of Indian society. So I really agree with you there. I really enjoyed our conversation. I’m going to move us towards the end here. I saw that you are doing some work on writing about polarization. Maybe you could tell us a little about your research and preview a little of it for us, and what can we expect to see from you soon in the future?

Thomas Zimmer 45:21

I think it’s important that I’m not trying to write the 551st book on why the country is so polarized. I think that’s exactly the wrong approach to this. I think the polarization label, the polarization diagnosis, it is actually quite misleading. I think it obscures more than it illuminates, and honestly, quite deliberately so, I think by many people who use it. Polarization, look, it’s everywhere, right? You can read like the newspapers without coming across the idea that oh, America is so polarized the whole time. America is divided. There are massive divides. There are massive partisan divides, but the polarization label, the polarization diagnosis, suggests that both sides are sort of vacating the center and moving to more extreme radical positions; to the polls, basically. That’s what polarization means. Then sort of the center is vacated, and we get to sort of two radical factions. One going ever crazy lefty and one going ever crazy right. That’s just not an adequate understanding of where we are in America.

Much of what is described as polarization — almost everything that is described as polarization — would much more adequately be described as a result of the radicalization of the American right. Sometimes people say: Oh, well, that’s what we call asymmetrical polarization, right? Basically sort of suggesting that one side is polarizing more quickly and more rapidly than the other. Okay, but look, if it’s so asymmetric, that one side is basically not moving much, and the other is rapidly sort of radicalizing, then why not call it radicalization of the right? So what I’m looking at is not a why is the country so polarized? But, why is the polarization idea, the polarization narrative, the polarization story… How has that arisen over the past few decades to where it has become one of the defining tales that we tell ourselves about American society?

I start with in the late 60s, when that label comes up, the idea of polarization, and I look at how it’s been used politically. Richard Nixon was the first one who used it politically. He wanted polarization. He wanted to polarize the electorate. I look at how political scientists and sociologists have picked it up, have theorized it, and then I look at how it has sort of proliferated into the broader public debate in the 90s, and how it has, again, the rise of the idea of polarization to this where we are today, where, you know, so many people agree that the root of all evil that plagues the country is polarization. I say no, look, we have to probably historicize that idea, which will help us to understand why so many people cling to this idea of polarization, even though it seems quite obvious to me that it obscures more than it illuminates.

That’s exactly why people cling to this idea of polarization; the analytical inadequacy, right? The fact that it obscures right wing radicalization and frames it as something else. That’s not a bug. That’s the feature of the polarization diagnosis. It allows you to lament the state of American politics without saying: That’s the responsibility mainly of one side radicalizing. It’s basically sort of a unity discourse through the back door. You lament polarization, but by saying polarization instead of placing the blame squarely where it belongs, you create unity. I mean, look at the Sunday morning shows, right? You have all these pundits sitting around and when someone says polarization, everyone just nods. Yes, polarization. Can’t we all agree, we’re also polarized.

That’s why you have even people like Mitch McConnell, or Ben Shapiro, or Frank Luntz, right, all talking about, oh, the country is so polarized, that’s so bad. And I’m like, well, that’s rich coming from you! That’s exactly the point. It enables you to talk about American politics in a way that transcends the partisan divide by formulating this sort of almost new unity discourse of “Can’t we all agree we’re so polarized?” It’s highly obscuring, rather than illuminating what’s actually the problem in the country and what’s actually the threat to American democracy, which is the radicalization, the anti-democratic radicalization of the American right.

That’s what I’m trying to unpack in that book that I’m trying to write. Looking at it historically, and how that idea of polarization has come up, how it’s been used politically, and how it has shaped the sort of broader political discourse, and why it’s been so attractive to so many people. Even though it seems quite clear to me that empirically analytically It’s not doing much, that’s exactly where the attractiveness stems from.

Coco Das 50:04

Well, that’s so interesting. Thomas, I really have enjoyed this conversation, and I look forward to seeing what else you write on Twitter and in book form. Here at Refuse Fascism, you know, we would refer a lot to this Yeats poem, ‘The Second Coming’, where one of the lines is “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity”, and this is a dynamic that really needs to change where the millions who recognize the danger, whether you call this fascism or not, that we really do sound the alarm and move heaven and earth to stop Trumpism from consolidating power, or whatever other form, this 21st century movement takes. I really want to thank you. Tell us again, how we can follow you and where we should look out for your work.

Thomas Zimmer 50:53

The best way to follow sort of my thoughts and my ideas and how they develop is really on Twitter. I use Twitter to put my thoughts out there and sort of develop my ideas. So it’s @TZimmer_history on Twitter, I’ll link to whatever I do, anything I put out there. I try to use it as a platform where I can hopefully put my ideas out there, my diagnosis out there, and and hopefully find people who find that helpful to make sense of what’s going on. So yeah, Twitter’s probably the best way to follow the work.

Coco Das 51:26

Thank you, Thomas.

Thomas Zimmer 51:27

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Coco Das 51:30

I really enjoyed my exchange with Thomas, and I look forward to having more dialogues like this on and off the podcast. My fellow members of the refuse fascism editorial board are actively working. To bring you the understanding you need to act and engage with others who want to stop the fascist America.

Every week on this podcast, you can hear Sam Goldman’s incisive commentary and interviews with influential writers and scholars. Every Thursday on YouTube, Andy Zee and Sunsara Taylor host the Revolution, Nothing Less Show on YouTube/TheRevComs. If you’ve never watched an episode go right now and catch up. Paul Street writes regularly for Counterpunch and has a new book out called ‘This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals and the Trumping of America’ from Rutledge Press. You can follow me on Twitter at @Coco_Das.

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