The Nature of the Conspiracy
Published at 08:35 on 10 October 2021
Now, as we have seen, there is an organized conspiracy in Congress, by members of both parties, to ensure there is no accountability for the top putschists responsible for the events of January 6th. This assertion is likely to provoke rejection amongst a significant portion of my readers: The Democrats are as bad as the fascist Republicans? Give me a break!
As such, I feel an elaboration into the nature of it is required. It’s not that there is a positive desire for fascism amongst most congressional Democrats; far from it. There is simply a very strong desire for politics as usual, for a return to the old status quo.
Acknowledging the nature and strength of the domestic fascist movement would mean by implication acknowledging that the old politics as usual is simply not possible anymore. That is an unpleasant thing to acknowledge, because it means losing one’s long-held world-view and giving up on a cherished goal.
It is a proverbial elephant-in-the-living-room situation. The living room’s inhabitants really don’t want to admit there is an elephant there, so they go around pretending that the elephant does not exist.
Ultimately, however, that distinction does not much matter. Behavior that helps fascism advance is behavior that helps fascism advance, whatever the motives for the behavior. The most likely end result, an authoritarian transition to a fascist state much like Franco’s Spain or Salazar’s Portugal, remains the same.
As Hannah Arendt showed, the roots of great evil are often surprisingly banal. Simply wanting to get along and be liked by the other party, wanting to get back to the old normal, is, in the present political context, an objectively pro-fascist stance.