Fascism: propaganda, persuasion, support

From the newsletter of Jeff The Undertow Sharlet. Wise on several levels, including in the use of “scare quotes” and the reference to myth, and there is more if you follow the link to his newsletter.

With darkness Trump became president, took over a party, and now threatens the world. Why does anyone imagine he wants to “resist” it? Why do they still pretend darkness can’t win?

It isn’t inevitable — but stopping it requires seeing it. Evaluating Trump's speech according to democracy’s laws of physics makes as much sense as declaring what we don’t know about black holes “impossible.” Fascism exerts a different gravity. The speech fuses the base; it’s the "confidence” of the base that draws in “undecideds.” That’s how fascism “works.” It doesn't have to be how fascism wins. But defeating it, I suspect, means at least a larger number of us discarding our reassurance narratives. Looking at the awfulness dead on, & fighting that, not what we wish it was.

Trump is a grotesque; he broadcasts, and only some can receive such a signal. But many of those aren’t, in everyday life, grotesques themselves. It’s their belief that persuades some. Their confidence. Their delusion. Trump speeches are for them, not for undecideds. Telling yourself no undecided could be drawn into Trumpism's obscene narcissism is by definition self-deception. The fact that someone's undecided, nine years in, means that they're not immune. They haven't caught Trumpism yet, but they aren't vaxxed, either.

It’s also important to emphasize that “undecideds” are a vestige of a vanished political order. It’s not that they don’t matter; but they matter much less. Trump’s campaign hacks may still care, but I think Trump knows he has two paths to power. The first isn’t through undecideds, it’s the activation of the base. If his base roars and democracy — that’s what I’m calling the other option, whoever represents it — mutters, he takes power.

If you're reading this you’ve probably read the reporting on the extensive legal groundwork Trumpism has established not to “contest” the election, as MSM, still operating pre-2016, puts it, but to overthrow it. But thatvs only part of that picture. Trumpism is a many-headed beast. Wonks do the legal stuff. Trump does the myth stuff. “Lies” is an accurate term, too, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t express how the lies work. “Myth” speaks to belief. The myth stuff right now is preparing the public for overthrowing the election if he loses. Preparing his followers to believe it justified, attempting to prepare the rest of us to acquiesce.

And yet, if Trumpism has multiple means of seizing power, that means there are multiple ways we can push it back. But only if we let ourselves see it coming.