Reconciliation? No!

Reconciliation? No! 

I hear many people whom I respect deploring the divisions in this country and saying we need to “come together as Americans.” That’s what Kamala Harris says. That’s what Rev. Chuck Currie, a civil rights activist UCC pastor in Portland, Oregon, says. So do a lot of other really good people. I could not disagree more. Let me explain why. 

What does “coming together as Americans mean?” All of us Americans are, of course, already Americans, so “come together as Americans” is something we have, in one sense, already done. Citizens of this country are by definition Americans. At this level, “come together as Americans” doesn’t mean anything. Yet those who say coming together as Americans is what we need to do apparently think the phrase means something not nothing. What might that something be?  

It appears to be that we’re supposed to stop pointing accusatory fingers at Americans with whom we disagree. It certainly is true that pointing accusatory at one’s political adversaries has become the way of American politics and to some extent the way of American life. Donald Trump calls his political opponents socialists and Marxists, though of course he has no idea of what either a socialist or a Marxist really is. He thinks people should be imprisoned just because they oppose him politically , something that is of course both immoral and unconstitutional. Trump and some of his supporters even think some of their political opponents should be executed just because they oppose the authoritarian regime Trump wants to impose on us. Trump and his minions accuse any news outlet that criticizes him of peddling “fake news.” Trump strongly criticizes any news outlet that fact checks anything he has said, most of which is, of course, a lie. Trump has turned the once respectable Republican Party into the Donald J. Trump cult of personality. Saying anything negative about Donald Trump is sure to provoke condemnation from him and from his numerous acolytes.  

Those of us on the other side of our country’s political divide, of course, also point accusatory fingers at Trump and his followers. We say Trump is a threat to our country. We say he is a racist and that he panders to white supremacists. We say he is a misogynist. We say he is guilty of sexual assault and of fraud. We say he plays fast and loose with classified government documents. We say the lies again and again about having won the 2020 presidential election and that his huge victory was stolen from him. We say that he incited a seditious riot on January 6, 2021. We say that he often incites violence through dog whistles, and sometimes he calls for it outright. We say that he has already put in place people who will refuse to certify Harris victories in the swing states and that he will do God knows what when he loses the election. We say that he is perfectly capable of and willing to engineer a violent coup to return himself to power. We call him an American fascist. We say that he is simply evil. 

So are both sides of this divide equally guilty of perpetuating an unnecessary division in this country? No, we are not. There’s a huge difference between us. Essentially everything Donald Trump says is a lie, and his followers follow their leader in virtually never telling the truth. Major news outlets like ABC, NBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post may make an occasional mistake. They are, after all, staffed by mere humans. They do not, however, intentionally lie. They do not practice “fake news.” Political figures both Democratic and Republican who oppose Trump are not guilty of treason. There is no moral or legal ground for putting them in jail.  

Our claim that Trump is an American fascist effectively sums up everything that is evil about Donald Trump, and when we call him a fascist we are simply telling the truth. To understand that truth, we must know what a “fascist” actually is and whether, and if so to what extent, the fact that Trump is an American fascist makes a difference. The term fascist arose in Italy after World War I. It was the name of Benito Mussolini’s political movement and party. It used violence against its opponents. It suppressed individual rights. It was a cult of personality for Mussolini. It ruled by decree and force not through democratic processes. It dreamt of a glorious past, in Mussolini’s case the Roman Empire of the very distant past, and it set about recreating that past. It was expansionistic, Mussolini invading both Greece and Ethiopia. Mussolini’s regime favored capitalists over workers, suppressing  Italy’s labor movements and proclaiming that it was protecting the Italian people from the Communists. 

The quintessential fascist regime, however, was that of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Mussolini was Hitler’s model and inspiration, but Hitler created a fascist regime far more destructive than even Mussolini’s was. Hitler perfected the fascist tactic of the big lie. He actually had at least two big lies. One was that the Germans were a master race superior to all other people and entitled to rule and even exterminate other peoples. The other was that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany’s problems including the loss of World War I, the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles, and the economic troubles of the 1920s, all this despite the fact that there actually weren’t all that many Jews in Germany.1  Hitler created a totalitarian state not dissimilar from the one Stalin created before him the Soviet Union. Despite the similarities between Hitler and Stalin, Hitler, like Mussolini, suppressed labor and claimed to be protecting the people from Communism. 

Beyond that, Hitler set out to conquer all of central and eastern Europe, exterminate the Jews, and kill or enslave the Poles, Ukrainians, and others. He provoked World War II when, in 1939, he invaded Poland to begin that extermination and enslavement. Hitler’s shock troops called the SS and others committed the Holocaust, one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever, with the intent of erasing Jews and Judaism from the map of Europe if not from the face of the earth. The horror Hitler’s Nazis inflicted on all of Europe but particularly on central and eastern Europe was horrific beyond comprehension. Hitler’s big lies justified that horror and made it probable if not inevitable. 

There are a few regimes in the world today that are in effect if not in name fascist. One is the regime of Viktor Orban in Hungary. A similar regime is that of Recep Erdogan in Turkey. More extreme examples are Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian, militarily expansionist regime in Russia and Kim Jong Un’s murderous, militarily threatening regime in North Korea. There are nationalistic fascist movements, usually called far right or neo-conservative rather than fascist, in Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe.  

Donald Trump is leading the equivalent movement in the United States. He calls it MAGA, which stands for Make America Great Again. Thus we see right at the outset that Trump’s movement is similar to Mussolini’s in that it claims to be able to recapture and recreate a glorious past, in Trump’s case one that never actually existed. Trump practices the big lie much like Adolf Hitler did. Trump has a couple of big lies just as Hitler did. He says that the United States of American is failing. He says it’s a hopeless mess. He claims crime is out of control and the people are worse off now than they were when he left office in early 2021. Statistics prove that neither of those claims is true.  

His other big lie is that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants and immigrants of color are the cause of America’s problems. He calls immigrants murderers and rapists. He says they are “poisoning the blood” of this country, a Nazi-like statement if ever there was one. He says immigrants are all criminals. He says other countries are emptying their jails and sending their criminals into our country. He says immigrants are taking jobs from “real” Americans. He even says that some immigrants are eating other people’s pet cats and dogs. None of that is true. It doesn’t matter. Trump uses these claims in much the same way Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s problems in the 1920s and early 1930s. Trump favors the wealthy over the poor, as fascists often do. He proposes destructive economic measures like imposing tariffs on goods imported from China, then he lies and says other countries will pay them not the American consumer.  

Leaders of fascist movements demand that their followers be loyal to them personally not to the nation they claim to lead or to any democratic constitution, like that of the Weimar Republic in Germany of the Constitution in the United States. That is precisely what Donald Trump demands of anyone who works for him. As is true of all fascist leaders, Trump considers the people’s civil rights to be obstacles in his way not guarantees of freedom. As is true of all fascist leaders, Trump wants to be an authoritarian ruler not a constitutional one. As is true of all fascist leaders, Trump is happy to incite and use violence to attain his ends. There simply is no doubt that Trump will create a fascist America if he ever gets another chance to do it. 

So. Is it appropriate for us to come together as Americans if that means, as surely it must, compromising with Donald Trump? If it means, as it does, extending respect and acceptance to that grossly immoral and mentally unstable man? No, it is not. Division is not our country’s primary problem. Trump and his jingoistic MAGA movement are our country’s primary problem. The solution is not to make nice with them. The solution is not to come together with them.The solution is to oppose them the way Italians should have opposed Mussolini in the 1920s and Germans should have opposed Hitler in the 1930s.  

I do not advocate violent opposition to Trump and his movement. Violence is at least as immoral as is the way Trump treats women as sex objects. We must, however, engage vigorously in every legal, nonviolent way that we have to stop Donald Trump and MAGA. We can’t do that by compromising with them. Fascists always use compromise to their own advantage, as Hitler did when Britain and France compromised with him at Munich in 1938 and when Stalin compromised with him in 1939. When a fascist leader sees violating a compromise as advantageous to him or her, as Hitler did with Britain and France when invaded Poland in 1939 and as he did with the Soviet Union when he invaded that treaty partner of his in 1941. For Donald Trump, as for all fascists, compromise is merely another tool he may use to gain his nefarious ends. He will never see it as a value in itself. 

I respect Vice President Kamala Harris. I respect Rev. Chuck Currie. But I strongly disagree with they call for all of us to come together as Americans. I, frankly, don’t even know what that is supposed to mean. If it means Trump’s followers abandon him and his political movement goes down in flames, fine. But I don’t expect that to happen, and I don’t think that’s what Harris and others mean when they call for all Americans to come together. For myself, I have no interest whatsoever in coming together with Trump and MAGA, and I will never do it. It is not what this country needs, and I wish people I otherwise respect would stop saying that it is.