It's the apocalypse season, when the media revs into high gear predicting the end of democracy, the outbreak of fascism, maybe a civil war, even outright Nazism. While the instant framing device is the midterm elections, which they expect President Donald Trump to cancel, nullify, buy or steal, the drumbeat has been steady. Because if not the midterms it is the Reflecting Pool, or the ballroom, or the arch, or the Gulf of America. They are used as shorthand for Hitlerian self-aggrandizement, of all that is wrong with gilt.
The National Review plain out just says: "Trump Is Planning a November Coup d'État." A high-ranking Biden-era defense official calls for the military to disobey any crazy Trump orders ahead of the midterms. A "legal icon" writes "Trump Plans To 'Wage The Final Battle' Against Democracy." A lot of people seem in favor of fighting back; 59 percent of Democratic poll respondents said they would feel "very positive" or "somewhat positive" if they learned a junta removed Trump and seized control of the American government (hyped-up rhetoric can have real-world impact). Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin even warns "President Trump's clearly expressed desire is to interfere with and even usurp the midterm elections. November 3 could be a defining test for the rule of law in this country, and both our democracy and our prosperity are on the line."
More bad news as another column declares the Republican Party has a fascism problem in its ranks. Nobel prize-winner Paul Krugman predicts Trump will issue a Hitlerian " Nero Degree" if the Republicans lose the midterms, ordering American monuments like the Kennedy Center burned. Jittery Tom Friedman of the New York Times is worried because "the future of democracy" is on the line come November 3. Friedman is still recovering from the infamous January 6, which he said reminded him of the Beirut he covered as a cub reporter. Friedman's newspaper loves to cite whatever thing is happening at the moment (ICE, some Army general fired) as a new Reichstag moment, loving those Nazi call-outs. However, if you prefer your fascism night terrors as fiction (or is it?) two new books chronicle with a straight face the coming Blue-Red civil war and subsequent AOC presidency. Meanwhile, another new book, purported to be a straight history, 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy, hits all the familiar notes, and throws in that Hitler, too, had coarse manners and sought to build a ballroom extension onto the Reichstag building itself.
One of the really sad cases is Art Spiegelman, who of all people should know better. Spiegelman wrote the comic novel Maus some forty years ago, summing up his father's recollections of the Holocaust. He portrayed the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats, and those who remained silent as pigs. Spiegelman warns there are too many touch points between what happened then and what is happening now, citing ICE as an outgrowth of creeping fascism. He claims Trump has "very effectively dismantled" the country's democratic ideals. He feels the president "is cutting off civil liberties and using his powers to squelch dissent" and he finds himself watching in alarm as ordinary Americans suffer a "new indignity every day". He has no hesitation in describing the administration as fascist, and so demands a justified "counter revolution" to take down Trump. "This is worse than most things I know," Spiegelman concludes about America. "I just don't see how we get out of this."
It is all disanalogy taken out to a singularity. People have become hysterical and it clouds their judgement even as it fills their wallet. Politics today can sound like a thriller novel where institutions collapse spectacularly on page one to set the story in motion. Every headline not supporting your own beliefs becomes evidence "democracy is dying." It is a helluva lead-in to the midterms.
So are they right ? Is it 1930s Germany out there?
No. Germany in the 1930s was a very different place from America 2026. The nation was ravaged by the First World War, reparations, and the hyperinflation of 1923. The Great Depression brought mass unemployment, banking failures, and political paralysis. The Nazi "democratic" election to power was preceded by years of political violence, Brownshirts in the streets, busting up rival parties' meetings and beating Jews. Hitler was never elected dictator. He was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg after conservative politicians decided they could use him to achieve their own goals. Germany had already crossed from political crisis into systematic suspension of civil liberties and the destruction of opposition parties. Hitler, as we are famously told, dismantled the Weimar Republic in just 53 days. American journalists have been predicting the equivalent over multiple administrations.
Reality aside, there is still that word, fascism, which is thrown around too casually. ICE abuse, however tragic, or a court decision you do not agree with does not make them stepping stones to fascism. People used to instead use perfectly workable terms like illiberal, populist, expansion of executive power, objectionable or constitutionally aggressive. Today "fascism" is a synonym for them all and as with all faux prophecies everything is a sign.
So what is behind the pre-midterm media juggernaut to proclaim the end of us ? To be certain a large amount of the fear mongering is simply the economics of attention. Nazi stuff generates clicks and likes. "Democracy is dying" is a shocking headline. The problem is once you go full Nazi there is nowhere else to go rhetorically. You end up digging in, trying to defend a bad position, knowing you can't top yourself but still have a podcast to fill. Where once a top-line media outlet could run a balanced piece headlined "American institutions continue to function, but several norms are under pressure," it now has to go all Chicken Little to get anyone's attention. The words have lost their shock value.
Another possibility is the media is using fear to motivate voters for their own political agenda. While their Op-Eds often focus on Trump's slump in support, they ignore the contempt with which many voters hold the Democratic Party over the cultural storm clouds of the Biden years. Media red lights flashing about democracy collide with voters' entirely different assessments of what government has done badly. The assumption that fear of Trump will automatically translate into Democratic votes is condescending toward voters. The idea seems to be as long as enough voters can be scared enough, they'll at least reluctantly vote Democrat. If a population can be made to believe the other side is not merely wrong but an existential threat to democracy, voting Democrat becomes a moral obligation and the voter a patriot. It is a very cynical trick being played.
We are not in the early days of fascism. Democracy has never been the absence of ugly politics, the expansion of executive power, corruption or even bad presidents. Democracy is a system for surviving and correcting those things. The media needs to back off the scare tactics and have a little faith in the people.
Original article: wemeantwell.com