The Road Back from Fascism

“One thing is sure. Democracy is doomed. This is our last election. It is fascism or communism. We are at the crossroads — I take the road to fascism”. — Father Charles Coughlin, 1936

In a day of stark images, one symbolized American descent like no other: the busts and portraits of patriots past gazing down from the walls at a lone terrorist walking through the halls of the Capitol, a large Confederate flag unfurled behind him. One hundred and sixty years have now passed since Abraham Lincoln gazed out at the Potomac in early 1861, anxiously awaiting the arrival of federal troops to save Washington from insurrectionists. It was saved then. Only now, long after Bull Run, is the flag of treason, of white rejectionism, displayed in the Capitol.

American fascism is ascendant. Those who ignored its rise, who both-sides’ed the rising schism in America, can no longer avert their eyes from the ascending illiberalism and resultant fragility of the republic. Donald Trump is the orchestrator of Wednesday’s horrific events, but as Edward R Murrow once said of Joseph McCarthy, “he didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully.” Trump could not have brought the country to the brink of catastrophe without the assistance of people who not only should know better, but probably do. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful in what we…