Next was fascism

Special prosecutor Jack Smith is preparing to end, as has been announced, the federal cases against Donald Trump given the immunity enjoyed by presidents. They are those referring to electoral subversion and illegal retention of classified documents. Smith has had an intense day: in the afternoon he also asked the judge in charge of the case for the assault on the Capitol for a pause “to analyze the new situation.” During the campaign, Trump said he would fire Smith “in two seconds” if he was re-elected. Something that just happened and he does not take office until January, but the machinery that was prepared -with the control of Justice-, and the gift of the voters who have given him the 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 have elected a president – for themselves and for the world – willing to establish inequality as a social organization based on drastic reforms that conform to the so-called Dark Enlightenment that eliminates democratic obstacles to the interests of the elites. Too many changes that are inconvenient for them have been made in these centuries. They are not the same, of course, the new aristocracy – business, cheating, greedy for money – we see in Trump’s team, with Elon Musk at the head and a circle of famous far-rightists.

In the countless analyzes that I read to explain the phenomenon, an obvious fact is suppressed that is not decisive: it was the citizens who voted for Trump. To a lying, sexist, classist, xenophobic man, convicted of some of the crimes accused of him and promoter of the assault on the temple of the sacrosanct American democracy, the Capitol, four years ago when he lost the elections to Biden. And he arrives burning with revenge and wanting to establish himself as an autocratic ruler, overthrowing essential pillars of what has been known until now in liberal democracies.

Journalist Claudi Pérez, in El País, recalls a key to Trump’s victory that colleagues from elDiario.es have also pointed out: “GDP is not enough to win elections” by Sáenz de Ugarte, for example. The Republican candidate asked citizens: “Okay, the macro figures are better, but do you make it to the end of the month more comfortably or not?” The trap is immense. And in Spain it also works. Have millions of people seriously believed that with Trump they are going to make ends meet more comfortably? Do you know what they voted for? I am convinced that not, regardless of the moral laxity involved in choosing a character like this.

The turning back begins, the Dark Enlightenment, the technofeudal, the destruction of democracies as they were understood. That is the problem: they have not provided the required solutions and the fatigue is great, but choosing the worst option does not seem like very informed people. Is there another? While we wait another four years and another four more for positive changes for everyone that do not occur, the extreme right advances its model as a bait for discontent.

Some very consistent authors such as Robert O. Paxton believe 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 one that believes in dubious promises, accepting in the package the violation of essential ethical foundations. Educated in frivolity and the absence of critical thinking. The first weapon used by Trump in his previous mandate was lies. He released them almost every time he spoke, as right-wing leaders do in Spain, Feijóo or Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the lead. And people buy them without thinking about the consequences.

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

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

In these 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, globalization, neoliberalism and postmodernism have been overturned. What is now is an abyss, a turn back. Far right, antidemocratic, reactionary and traditionalist. Nationalist and protectionist in economic matters. That combats gender roles, sexual diversity and migration. It is the antithesis of the Enlightenment. It advocates – as the only “modernity” – the functioning of countries as companies. Hierarchical, of course. That ordinary mortals believe that they can be included among the beneficiaries is truly strange.

Until now they have used citizens. If, as Trump warned, they will not have to vote anymore, they no longer need them except to continue using them for other purposes. But gullible citizens are not innocent. No matter how great the disappointment, a little more intellectual curiosity is needed before swallowing everything they throw at you. Because they throw more and more garbage for misinformation and ideological consumption. Through the networks, countless beings without the slightest knowledge of anything have felt empowered to discuss at the level of any true expert. Climate change, for example, is an enormous threat that, for those who deny it without foundation, it implies if controls are removed… “live better”. Information is not what the first person who arrives counts, it requires verifications, an order of priorities, truth above all. And, in fact, destroying it has been and is 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, you even wonder how they could be chosen to manage basic issues in people’s lives. And the process of lies and contradictions with which they try to cover up their responsibility in aggravating the consequences of DANA, a true tragedy, is not at all surprising. But the same thing happened in Ayuso’s Madrid during the pandemic. It is true that interested media manipulate it, but to the point of dissuading reality in such an extreme way? Do they not even learn from the fatal consequences on others?

A very worrying, terrible moment for humanity, this one that is going to a crescendo because no one is putting a stop to it. Orban and Meloni revalidated by Trump’s victory and all together imprisoning a European Union that let fascism into the kitchen and increasingly moves at their command. Europe and the traditional parties need a deep reflection, but citizens who are not passive subjects of currents must do even more; they must understand that they are moved by them and often with their own errors, those that end up destroying them. Citizens have voted for Trump, and so has Mazón. We are the citizens who choose who to believe and the means by which to inform ourselves.

When 5 years ago, a group of authors evaluated 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 the following years was savage capitalism, which refuses to accept any type 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,” wrote Javier Valenzuela. “Everything, from the air we breathe, to the water we drink, to the food we eat, to healthcare, pensions, energy, education, housing, debt, everything has become a commodity subject to speculation in the markets.” stock markets”, highlighted Lourdes Lucía. The abandonment of its role by a social democracy that left economic policy “in the hands of neoliberal dogmatics” was denounced, Pérez Tapias

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

We also noted how other walls had sprouted in the frightened eyes of those rescued on the high seas, in wars, in the victims of frantic racism, in poverty and in the injustice suffered by millions of people. And Àngels Martínez Castells evoked Cavafis to lament those who do not see the future, even though it is upon them. And they live without hearing the noise that the “masons” produce when they build the walls, without realizing that walls isolate them from the outside world.”

There is already another one that is almost insurmountable. On top Trump and all the other fascists with millions of beings supporting the bricks linked with their bodies and their lives to support them. Those are the main people responsible. By the way, it is also usually citizens who shoot them down.

#fascism