“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” US president Joe Biden warned on August 25. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”

A week later, in Philadelphia, he expanded on his criticisms: “They promote authoritarian leaders and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, the rule of law, the very soul of this country.”

He’s not wrong, but his emphasis on a single aspect — Donald Trump’s cult of personality — obscures the real nature of “semi-fascism” and comes a century too late.

To put it bluntly, the United States has been more than “semi-“fascist since long before Biden was born.

Fascism rose from the social tumult following World War One as armed groups of military veterans clashed violently with the socialist left around the world. In Germany, they took the form of various “freikorps.” In the United States, they flocked to a single organization, the American Legion.

The Legion brawled with leftists in the streets of American cities, conducted military-style raids on labor union offices and, in the words of its national commander, Alvin Owsley, stood “ready to protect our country’s institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who menaced Italy. … Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.” The Legion even invited Mussolini, the first self-declared fascist head of state in the world, to address its national convention.

At the same time, what James Burnham later described as the “managerial state” — which answers to the Mussolini’s definition of fascism, “everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State” —  began to coalesce in various countries.

In the US, that culminated in the New Deal and a cult of personality around Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected to an unprecedented four terms as president and would likely have continued as leader (the German word is “Fuhrer”) had he lived longer.

Pre-existing strong democratic norms blunted and limited the scope of American fascism (particularly quasi-worship of the designated leader), but victory in World War Two allowed it to continue within that limited scope.

American fascism’s key aspects — nationalism, militarism, subordination of rights to “national security” claims, obsession with internal policing, and, yes, increasingly rigged/constrained elections to preserve the rule of “approved” parties (versus no elections at all) — survive and thrive to this day.

Joe Biden has been a cog in the American fascist machine, a willing participant in its depredations, for more than 50 years, promoting everything from mass incarceration to state control of enterprise through “industrial policy.”

His sole valid complaint about “the MAGA philosophy” is that it re-introduces the “cult of personality” aspect of fascism’s Spanish and pre-World-War-2 Italian, German, Japanese, and Soviet variants.

He’s right about that, but he’s advocating for one form of fascism over another, not against fascism itself.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading,” reads a September 1 headline at the New York Times.

See what they did there? See what’s incorrect?

If not, consider these three snippets from the article beneath the headline:

“National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago.”

“Then came the pandemic, which shuttered schools across the country almost overnight.”

“[E]xperts say it will take more than the typical school day to make up gaps created by the pandemic.”

The headline and the three snippets represent a brazen attempt at Orwellian “rectification” of history to erase key facts and reassign blame.

The pandemic itself — that is,  COVID-19 — has had almost no  direct effect on 9-year-olds.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, to date the total number of 9-year-old Americans who have died of COVID-19 in the 32 months since it broke out is 42. That’s about one of every 25,000 US COVID-19 deaths. The numbers for other preteen and adolescent age groups are similar.

We’ve known since early on that kids are unlikely to get COVID-19, even less likely to become severely ill from COVID-19, and have almost no chance of dying of COVID-19.

We’ve also had a pretty good grasp of COVID-19’s symptoms from the beginning. Fever. Dry cough. Fatigue. Respiratory distress. One thing that’s not a symptom of COVID-19? “Shuttering of schools.”

COVID-19 didn’t “shutter schools.” Humans — adult humans in positions of authority — did that.

After nearly three years, education is one of many institutions that haven’t recovered from  the damage done by dumb decisions American politicians and bureaucrats made early on and then kept making, all while hopping from foot to foot screeching “BUT SCIENCE!” at anyone who pointed out the costs and problems involved.

Instead of admitting that the decisions they made were, in most cases, massive unforced errors based on panic and political power grabs rather than on sound science or any previously existing conception of “public health,” the people who made those choices keep trying to shift blame.

Why? Presumably because they hope to avoid responsibility and accountability by memory-holing what actually happened and their role in it, and just blaming Every Bad Thing on “the pandemic.”

And the New York Times is helping them get away with it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On August 23, Democratic primary voters in Florida picked their champion for the November attempt to unseat incumbent Republican governor Ron DeSantis.

In fairness, those voters weren’t offered much of a choice. The two “had a realistic chance of winning” candidates were Nikki Fried and Charlie Crist.

Fried, a former lobbyist, spent her entire term as the state’s only statewide elected official (agriculture commissioner) issuing “oh no you didn’t” press releases every time DeSantis so much as yawned, and pulling stupid tricks like adding her photo to the inspection stickers on every Florida gas pump as publicly funded campaign ads (the legislature nixed that one in short order).

You’d  have to look pretty hard to find a candidate less likely to lead a successful anti-DeSantis revolution. Unless, of course, Charlie Crist happened to get interested. Which he did, decisively defeating Fried for the ballot line.

Crist  is the mirror-like spitting image of Ron DeSantis: They’re both swamp creatures, political careerists, tax parasites who’ve spent their entire adult lives either on, or trying to get on, government payrolls.

Crist has been a state senator, state education commissioner, state attorney general, governor, and US Representative. He’s been continuously in office, running for office, or preparing to run for office since 1986. His party affiliation record is sort of “reverse Donald Trump.” Over the last decade, he’s gone from Republican to “independent” to Democrat. Whose dog is he? Whomever’s will hunt with him in his latest crusade to get paid for running your life.

DeSantis’s resume is shorter but strikingly similar. He went from government lawyer — first in the US Navy, representing/advising the government’s Guantanamo Bay torturers, then as an assistant US attorney — to US Representative, to jumping on the Trump train and getting himself elected governor by a razor-thin margin of less than 1/2 of 1% in 2018. Since which time he’s split his work days between pouring culture war fertilizer on his presidential ambitions and trying to make sure that anyone who might vote against his re-election this November can’t vote at all.

Neither of these life-long grifters deserves another four years of welfare checks, but one of them will almost certainly win this November’s episode of Wheel of Voter Misfortune (spoiler: It will probably be DeSantis, who’s at least good at motivating his “base,” while Crist enthuses only … well, no one).

In 2016, Trump re-popularized the slogan “drain the swamp,” which has been around forever but which he probably cribbed from Pat Buchanan, who beat him in his first presidential campaign (the Reform Party’s 2000 nomination contest).

DeSantis and Crist ARE the swamp. They may not represent EVERYTHING  wrong with American politics, but between them they represent most of those things. They’re twin poster boys for term limits, with the preferred number being “zero.”

I won’t attempt to advise Florida voters on their third party and independent options, but they should know that a vote for Ron DeSantis is a vote for Charlie Crist, and a vote for Charlie Crist is a vote for Ron DeSantis.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY