It Has Happened Here

Fascism can slither into a democracy unnoticed until a moment of social dysfunction, then it strikes hard, its poison seeping into the psyche of the nation as its political leaders struggle for constitutional coherence.

Despite his decisive election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump refused to relinquish power, and waged a deadly insurrection with an army of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021 to take control of the United States government before Biden was inaugurated.

This is fascism in 21st century America, where Trump, once considered a billionaire buffoon until he won the presidency in 2016, directed thousands of loyalists, many armed or ready to retrieve an arms cache nearby, to attack the U.S. Capitol and stop certification of the 2020 election.

Hundreds were injured, five people died and one woman was killed in the melee before the mob was turned back.Yet, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate still voted to overturn the election in favor of Trump, even after his loyalists destroyed property, beat police officers, and voted to hang Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence.

Gallows for Pence on Jan. 2, 2021.

Credit: Tyler Merbler

Meanwhile, a presidential hopeful for 2024, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, signs laws by a complicit Sunshine State legislature that dictate what school children and high schoolers should learn. Are checks and balances, one of democracy’s pillars, no longer valid there?

In Pennsylvania, Trump-endorsed Republican Doug Mastriano, a conservative Christian and ex-army officer, vows to disenfranchise voters if he becomes governor and doesn’t like the outcome of statewide elections. Mastriano was among those who marched on the Capitol Jan. 6.

Not since Huey Long of Louisiana has there been governors or candidates for governor willing to tear apart democracy to keep or get power. Long was a beloved populist with a fascist fist. As the Democratic and demagogic governor (and later U.S. senator), he ruled the Bayou State from 1928 to 1935 when he was assassinated at the state’s capitol.

The iron-fisted Long.

Credit: Library of Congress

The conservative wing of the Republican Party, having long desired to dictate social mores from the pulpit of government, finally succeeded after jerry-rigging the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided recently that women have no rights under the Constitution.

Five conservative justices took away a fundamental right of privacy under Roe v. Wade, thus effectively banning abortion. They also struck down a gun-safety law in New York and several other states that restricted gun owners from openly carrying weapons.

Justice Clarence Thomas who delivered the opinion on guns appears to have no problem with Trump’s armed insurrection, which his wife, Ginny, supported, if not helped organize.

Thomas said the court is now considering stripping more rights including same sex marriage. In the history of the United States, the Supreme Court has never taken away a constitutional right, but this court is only getting started. Thomas wants to nullify years of gun-safety laws.

This fall, fascist forces could succeed in controlling Congress. If Republicans win one or both houses, they have threatened to impeach Biden for no other reason than to impeach him. If that occurs, the coup Trump started on Jan. 6 becomes a fait accompli.

No matter who wins the presidential election in 2024, a conservative-controlled Supreme Court and a Republican Congress dominated by conservatives will maneuver to decide the winner.

In 1935, during the rise of fascism in Europe, writer Sinclair Lewis penned a novel about a fascist leader taking power in the United States, “It Could Happen Here.”

Since that period, fascist forces have banged at America’s door, and conservative politicians and religious-right leaders have tried to let them in, eager to serve their own self-interests and thirsts for power. Their wish appears on the verge of coming true. It has now happened here.

Some of the leading forces of fascism in this country have largely been conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians. From the anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin, who embraced fascism on his Detroit radio programs in the 1930s, to today’s Supreme Court Justices like Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch (now Episcopalian), Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts.

Perhaps fascism’s absolutism resembles the dogma of religions like Catholicism and evangelical Christianity and that’s why churchgoers find appeal in both.

The three largest countries in Europe that turned to fascism in the 1930s were Catholic: Italy, led by Benito Mussolini; Germany, led by Adolf Hitler; and Spain, led by Francisco Franco.

While Mussolini and Hitler were raised Catholic neither man believed in their faith. They led the most brutal war in world history. Franco was a devout Catholic who, with Hitler’s help, waged a brutal Civil War (he stayed out of World War II), and then led an evil dictatorship for 39 years.

The five conservative justices who took away the right of a woman to choose her own health care based their ruling not on constitutional or even science-backed constitutional law. They based it on their religious beliefs. Could we be headed to a sort of Franco-theocratic rule?

If conservative Republicans manage to succeed in their fascist quest, their next task is re-writing the Constitution. They will surely take away more rights and eliminate the Establishment Clause that, at this tenuous moment, prevents the government from making religious-based laws.

Since 2014, 19 state legislatures – everyone one of them Republican controlled – have passed resolutions calling for a constitutional convention. Four – Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia, South Carolina – did so this year. The effort is led by wealthy business conservatives such as Charles Koch.

Conservative Republicans claim they want to re-write the Constitution to reign in federal spending and limit government. That is devious. A convention will allow them to throw out our current Constitution for a document that could create an authoritarian government and restrict rights for everyone by heterosexual Christian whites.

Legal scholars have long warned of the dangers of a convention, particularly in an era so politically polarized as today.

As one former Supreme Court chief justice, Warren Burger, explained during his tenure on the court from 1969 to 1986, “there is no way to effectively limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda.  Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey.”

Conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia (yet another Catholic), who died in 2016, was even more succinct in his opinion: “I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?”