Fascism at the Border

Fascism at the Border

In a Facebook post I recently wrote that what Donald Trump is doing at the southern border of the United States is Exhibit A in the case against him as a fascist. I want here to explain that statement. For a more in depth analysis of Trump as an American fascist see the earlier post "American Fascist" on this blog. Here's what I mean when I say that what he is doing at our border with Mexico is strong evidence of his being a fascist.

What is he doing at our southern border? He is instituting a system of terror against people who cross that border without a documented right to do so. He calls his policy "zero tolerance." It consists of a practice of detaining anyone at the border who cannot produce documents that establish the person's right to be in this country. Most horrifically it consists of tearing children away from their parents and keeping them in inhumane, unsafe conditions in detention facilities that were never designed for that purpose and are incapable of implementing it without immense suffering by the children so detained. Trump makes his intent here clear. He is trying to terrorize families into not coming here without documentation. What we have here then is a cruel policy of terror directed against a target population nominally for the purpose of controlling immigration across the Mexican border. That policy is pure fascism.

It is fascism first of all because it is so cruel. We are holding innocent children torn away from their parents in conditions in which they do not even have toothbrushes or mats to sleep on. A few of them have died. A few of them have reported sexual assault. Trump has instituted a policy of ripping families apart for his own political purposes. That is fascism pure and simple.

Trump's policy is fascist also because it is illegal. Under international law every person may freely enter a country of which that person is not a citizen for the purpose of seeking asylum. Most of the people Trump is detaining have come to the US to do just that, to seek asylum. Most of the families he has torn apart are people coming from living conditions of poverty so severe that they produce malnutrition and even starvation, They come from countries in which violence by the government and by uncontrolled gangs of thugs make ordinary life impossible and blight the futures of their children. Whether our country will grant them asylum is a question separate from the question of these people's right to seek asylum. If they have come here to seek asylum they are not here illegally, and Trump has no legal right to do to them what he does to them even if he had that right in other circumstances, which by the way he doesn't.

What Trump is doing at our southern border is fascist because it is racist. The people coming across that border are for the most part brown not white, and they speak Spanish not English as their native language. If those people were white and spoke English Trump wouldn't be doing to them what he is doing to them. Anyone who doubts that contention is insufficiently familiar with the history and present reality of American racism. That person doesn't realize the depth and the power of the racism not of all but of most people who support Trump. Trump targets the brown Spanish speakers who cross our border not because they present a real problem but because his base hates them not for what they have done but for who they are. That's fascism pure and simple.

Most of all what Trump is doing at the southern border is fascist because it is a campaign of terror directed against a target population claiming to solve a crisis that doesn't exist for the purpose not of controlling immigration but of stirring up support from his base of not exclusively but mostly ignorant, prejudiced, frightened people by pandering to their ignorance, prejudice, and fear. That's what Hitler did with the Jews. Trump isn't intentionally killing them, and I don't think that he will. He is his own kind of monster, but he is not Hitler. Not yet anyway. He is however a stereotypical fascist, and his fascism is on full display at our border with Mexico. Blaming an innocent but identifiable group of people for problems that are not of their making is a classic technique of fascists. Hitler did it with Jews. Stalin did it with people he branded "enemies of the people, the differences between Stalin's Communism and Hitler's Nazism being more in their rhetoric than in their policies. Trump is doing it with brown people who enter this country without documentation. Different people, same technique of pandering to a base of people incapable of understanding (or at least unwilling to understand) the real problems they face and the real causes of those problems. That is quite simply fascism and nothing less.

So there is no doubt that Trump is an American fascist. There's lots of proof of that contention, but if you doubt it just open your eyes to what he is doing at our southern border. His policies there are brutally cruel and both legally and morally unjustified and unjustifiable. We Americans of good faith must somehow make it stop. We will do that if we thrown Trump out of office in next year's presidential election. We would do it if Congress would impeach him and remove him from office as it is clearly their constitutional duty to do but which they clearly will not do. There is a crisis at our southern border, but it's not a crisis caused by people crossing that border from the south. It is a crisis caused by what Trump and his people are doing to them once they're here. May we all do what we can to resolve that crisis as quickly as possible.