Unconscionably belated but still deeply germane, this week Biden urged Americans to "ensure our democracy (and) our decency endures" - this, in a nation now pivotally "muddling through fascism" while battling lies, fear, bigotry, Christofascist courts and savage attacks on the rights of many. Mournfully little has changed: Almost 80 years ago, the U.S. was warning World War ll soldiers to know and fight a startlingly similar enemy, born of "getting men to hate rather than to think," of government "by the few and for the few."
Well before Trump - but most noticeably since his tawdry arrival - America has been stumbling through and past fascism, argues Noah Berlatsky on Public Notice, neither succumbing to global crisis nor fully confronting authoritarianism and its grave costs "in ongoing human misery and injustice." Amidst the crimes of a newly emboldened, rapidly radicalizing GOP - gutted abortion rights, banned books, rising white supremacy, sweeping legal assaults on trans, poor, queer, black and other vulnerable people - Berlatsky cites the debt ceiling fight as an example of a newly fashioned liberal end-run in which fascism "neither wins nor loses, or loses gradually." Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein calls this muddling through "a perfectly fine goal" - defeating Trumpism and fascism as we retain "an imperfect democracy with some absolutely unjustifiable features." Berlatsky concedes its pros, but questions its serious cons: Rather than a "full-throated defense" of the Constitution," it leaves many people in the lurch, cedes to GOP blackmail, and treats "de facto fascist regimes in the states as legitimate when they target the rights of the most vulnerable." "Supervillain hostage-taking is not conducive to normal democratic processes," he warns. "We should be clear about the costs."
When Biden spoke on Memorial Day, he urged a famously unmindful country to "never forget the price that was paid to protect our democracy," calling on us to "recommit (to) a future grounded in freedom, democracy, equality, tolerance, opportunity, and justice.” Weirdly, notes Heather Cox Richardson,the U.S. government felt the same need 78 years ago to remind World War ll soldiers what they were fighting for, and against - a threat uncannily like today's. Part of a series published by the War Department, the March 1945 pamphlet FASCISM! began, "You are away from home, risking your very lives (against) a thing called fascism." By "skillful manipulation of fear and hate," under "the guise of super-patriotism," fascists erase civil liberties, treat "women as breeders," claim "supporters are the only people who count," pit "political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other while they seize power," "label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them," and wield their power "in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy." “Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance," it warned; fighting it requires being "on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American." And don't think it can't come here: "After all, (we) once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache."
In the same era, Woody Guthrie never made that mistake. Clear-eyed and ceaselessly vigilant toward injustices, Woody believed that, "All you can write is what you see." If alive today, his daughter Nora suggests, "I think Woody would be writing everything down, from the minutiae of the daily news to the bigger questions of why are we here and what’s happening right now." Guthrie and his music, of course, still live on through all of us, from Dylan, Steve Earle, Billy Bragg to a new record from Dropkick Murphys, referencing Woody's famed guitar message, titled, "This Machine Still Kills Fascists." Last year, New York’s Morgan Library and Museum hosted the exhibit Woody Guthrie: People Are the Song,tracing his life and work through notebooks, drawings, guitars et al. There's his handwritten lyrics for "This Land Is Your Land," originally "God Blessed America," with all six verses: "In the shadow of the steeple/ by the relief office I saw my people/As they stood there hungry." Raised poor and barely domesticated, there's also his 1943 "New Years Rulin’s” to-do list: Shave, take bath, read lots good books, stay glad, save dough, dream good, love everybody, brush teeth if any. The final item: "Wake up and fight fascism." "It was serious," says Nora. "It wasn’t a joke."
Woody Guthrie: "All you can write is what you see."Photo from Library of Congress
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Woody Guthrie: "All you can write is what you see."Photo from Library of Congress