Fascism: Why It Can Happen Here

In a matter of days the husband and I will head to Europe for two weeks - as usual, we have the house sitting/dog sitting lined up - and it will be interesting to see first hand how America's image is tattered in the eyes of long time allies.  A year ago while in the United Kingdom, the popular contempt for the Trump/Pence regime was palpable, especially as the violence exploded in Charlottesville and made the front page of every major London newspaper.  Britain, of course has its own problems with white nationalism, xenophobia, and dreams of lost empire that resulted in the Brexit vote - another election where Russia sought to breed hate and discord - which may yet destroy Britain's economy and eliminate any claim it clings to as a world power.  All thanks to what boils down to racial animosity. France, where we visit first, fought back Russian efforts to bring fascism to power yet still has its problems, not the least of which is its favored status as a target of Islamic terrorism - it represents everything religious extremists hate.  As we prepare to set off, America seems poised at a precipice where democracy may die if Democrats fail to prevail in a blue wave that blocks Republican efforts to turn the country into a democracy in name only.  A column in the New York Times looks at the perilous situation.  Here are excerpts:

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a friend of mine — an expert on international relations — made a joke: “Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true historical path — fascism.” Even at the time, his quip had a real edge.  And as of 2018 it hardly seems like a joke at all.

[In[ Poland and Hungary, both still members of the European Union, in which democracy as we normally understand it is already dead.

In both countries the ruling parties — Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary — have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption and effectively delegitimized dissent. The result seems likely to be one-party rule for the foreseeable future.

And it could all too easily happen here. There was a time, not long ago, when people used to say that our democratic norms, our proud history of freedom, would protect us from such a slide into tyranny. In fact, some people still say that. But believing such a thing today requires willful blindness. The fact is that the Republican Party is ready, even eager, to become an American version of Law and Justice or Fidesz, exploiting its current political power to lock in permanent rule. Just look at what has been happening at the state level.

In North Carolina, after a Democrat won the governorship, Republicans used the incumbent’s final days to pass legislation stripping the governor’s office of much of its power.

In Georgia, Republicans tried to use transparently phony concerns about access for disabled voters to close most of the polling places in a mainly black district.

In West Virginia, Republican legislators exploited complaints about excessive spending to impeach the entire State Supreme Court and replace it with party loyalists.

And these are just the cases that have received national attention. There are surely scores if not hundreds of similar stories across the nation. What all of them reflect is the reality that the modern G.O.P. feels no allegiance to democratic ideals; it will do whatever it thinks it can get away with to entrench its power.

[A]t the national level? That’s where things get really scary. We’re currently sitting on a knife edge. If we fall off it in the wrong direction — specifically, if Republicans retain control of both houses of Congress in November — we will become another Poland or Hungary faster than you can imagine. This week Axios created a bit of a stir with a scoop about a spreadsheet circulating among Republicans in Congress, listing investigations they think Democrats are likely to carry out if they take the House. The thing about the list is that every item on it — starting with Donald Trump’s tax returns — is something that obviously should be investigated, and would have been investigated under any other president. But the people circulating the document simply take it for granted that Republicans won’t address any of these issues: Party loyalty will prevail over constitutional responsibility.

Many Trump critics celebrated last week’s legal developments, taking the Manafort conviction and the Cohen guilty plea as signs that the walls may finally be closing in on the lawbreaker in chief. But I felt a sense of deepened dread as I watched the Republican reaction: Faced with undeniable evidence of Trump’s thuggishness, his party closed ranks around him more tightly than ever.

This goes even for politicians who once seemed to have some principles. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was a voice of independence in the health care debate; now she sees no problem with having a president who’s an unindicted co-conspirator appoint a Supreme Court justice who believes that presidents are immune from prosecution. Senator Lindsey Graham denounced Trump in 2016, and until recently seemed to be standing up against the idea of firing the attorney general to kill the Mueller investigation; now he’s signaled that he’s O.K. with such a firing.

But why is America, the birthplace of democracy, so close to following the lead of other countries that have recently destroyed it?

Don’t tell me about “economic anxiety.” That’s not what happened in Poland, which grew steadily through the financial crisis and its aftermath. And it’s not what happened here in 2016: Study after study has found that racial resentment, not economic distress, drove Trump voters.

The point is that we’re suffering from the same disease — white nationalism run wild — that has already effectively killed democracy in some other Western nations. And we’re very, very close to the point of no return.

How Democracy Disappears

If one wants to see what Donald Trump and enablers want as the new template for America, look no farther than the nation of Hungary where democracy has died.  True, a veneer of democratic forms remains, but the country is in essence run by a strongman/dictator.  In some ways, it should not be surprising that Hungary has fallen to such a fate give the country's history - it was a constant problem for the imperial government of the Austrian Empire and even helped sabotage the war effort in WWI (the book Ring of Steel looks at this in depth) and played up ethnic tensions.  But, back to the present day and how Hungary's democracy has died with the help of reactionary forces much like the base of today's Republican Party which prefers an autocrat over a democracy where those deemed "other" have rights and equal say.  Andrew Sullivan looks at the insidious process in a piece in New York Magazine.  Here are article highlights that ought to galvanize decent, moral Americans (which excludes evangelicals) to action, especially in the 2018 mid-term elections:

. . . . how you turn a prosperous 21st-century liberal democracy into an illiberal one, and then into a de facto dictatorship. There are no tanks; no mass arrests of opposition politicians; no coups; no direct assaults on the rule of law; and no new totalizing ideology. There is, in fact, no moment where you can definitively say that the liberal democracy has ceased to exist. But in Hungary, an upstanding member of the European Union, liberal democracy is now dead.

[Hungary] has now completed a process … that has mostly remained theoretical until now: It was once a liberal democracy. As Orbán undermined the rule of law, dismantled the separation of powers, and massively violated the rights of ethnic minorities, it turned into an illiberal democracy. Now, it is effectively a dictatorship with a thin electoral veneer.

The recipe is a familiar one by now. In a society where social mores, especially in the big cities, appear to be changing very fast, there is a classic reaction. More traditional voters in the heartland begin to feel left behind, and their long-held values spurned. At the same time, a wave of unlawful migrants, fleeing terror and deprivation, appear to threaten the demographic and cultural balance still further, and seem to be encouraged by international post-national entities such as the European Union. A leftist ruling party in disarray gives a right-wing demagogue an opening, and he seizes it.

Orbán to amend the constitution in 2011, reducing the number of seats in the parliament from 386 to 199, gerrymandering them brutally to shore up his party’s standing in future elections, barring gay marriage in perpetuity, and mandating that in election campaigns, state media would take precedence over independent sources. He also forced a wave of early retirements in the judiciary in order to pack the courts with loyalists.

As Mounk notes, Orbán also tapped into deep grievances rooted in Hungary’s loss of territory in the 20th century, by giving the vote to ethnic Hungarians in neighboring Romania and removing it from more culturally progressive expats. But it was in response to the migration crisis in 2015, that Orbán truly galvanized public opinion behind him.

Orbán responded by spreading fears of an influx of terrorists and criminals, of a poisoning of Hungarian culture, and expressing visceral nationalist hostility to the diktats of the European Union. Added to all that, of course, was a generous salting of classic central European anti-Semitism. Voters especially in rural areas flocked to him.

He further shifted the public discourse by creating and advancing new media outlets that amplified his propaganda, while attacking, harassing, and undermining all the others. He erected a huge fence to keep Muslim immigrants out, and refused to accept any of the 50,000 refugees the EU wanted to settle in his country. His political allies began to get very rich, as crony capitalism spread.

If you find many of these themes familiar, you’ve been paying attention. In the middle of a reaction against massive social change and a wave of illegal immigration, a right-wing party decides to huff some populism. A charismatic figure emerges, defined by hostility to immigration, becomes an iconic figure, and even though he doesn’t win a majority of votes, comes to office. His party is further shored up by gerrymandering, giving it a structural advantage in gaining and keeping power, including a seven percentage-point head start in the House of Representatives. That party does what it can to further suppress the vote of its opponents, especially ethnic minorities, and focuses on packing the courts, even rupturing long-standing precedents to deny a president of the opposing party his right to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat.

Openly propagandist media companies emerge, fake news surges, while the president uses the powers of his office to attack, delegitimize, and discredit other media sources, even to the point of threatening a company like Amazon. A mighty wall is proposed against immigrants on the border, alongside fears of a mass “invasion” from the South. Social conservatives are embraced tightly. The census is altered to ensure one party’s advantage in future district-drawing. Courts are disparaged and the justice system derided as rigged by political opponents.

The difference, of course, is that Orbán is an experienced politician, and knows exactly what he’s doing. Trump is a fool, an incompetent, and incapable of forming any kind of strategy, or sticking to one. The forces arrayed against the populist right, moreover, are much stronger in the U.S. than in Hungary; our institutions more robust; our culture much more diverse. Our democracy is far, far older.

And yet almost every single trend in Hungary is apparent here as well. The party of the left has deep divisions, and no unifying leader, while the ruling party is a loyalist leader-cult. [Trump] The president’s supporters now support a purge in the Department of Justice and the FBI, to protect the president from being investigated.

[Trump] The president himself has repeatedly demonstrated contempt for liberal norms; and despite a chaotic first year and a half, is still supported by a solid and slightly growing 42 percent of the public. Meanwhile, the immigration issue continues to press down, the culture wars are intensifying again, and the broad reasons for Trump’s election in the first place remain in place: soaring social and economic inequality, cultural insecurity, intensifying globalization, and a racially fraught period when white Americans will, for the first time, not form a majority of citizens.

History is not over; and real, profound political choices are here again. My hope is that the descent into illiberalism across the West might shake up the rest of us in defending core liberal democratic principles, wherever they are threatened, bringing us to the ballot box in huge numbers this fall, and abandoning the complacency so many have lapsed into.

We cannot take anything for granted anymore. What was once a theoretical collapse of a liberal democracy now has a proof of principle. Do not ask when this choice between liberalism and illiberalism will come to America. It is already here.

Troubling Anti-Gay Signs in Hungry

My father's parents were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before they left for America just prior to World War I and I have often wanted to visit the region.  Now, signs in Hungry suggest I might want to delete that country from any such trip.  With the economy lagging, once again gays - and Jews - are becoming the whipping boys and scapegoats for the political far right.  I certainly have no desire to visit any place that I'm viewed as vermin or my rights are restricted.  I can experience that right here in Virginia.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at the disturbing signs taking place in Hungry.  Here are some excerpts:

How do you know if a real storm is brewing — or if you’re just reacting to a few passing clouds?  That’s a question that many Hungarians and people keeping an eye on the country are asking these days.

[T]to Kollanyi’s ears and those of many other Hungarians, there’s an authoritarian, nationalistic tenor to things, along with strains of anti-Semitism and antipathy to other minorities.  “It’s not good,” said Kollanyi, who is Jewish, when I spoke with her last weekend. “It’s not even a little good.” Pay attention to Hungary. It may not have any great economic heft, and it’s home to only about 10 million people with a tropism toward beer and a talent for brooding. But it could turn out to be a test case of the E.U.’s imperiled sway in these days of debt and austerity.

 

Hungary could also be a window into just how potently economic anxiety fans the flames of bigotry. E.U. membership hasn’t brought Hungarians the broad prosperity they had hoped for; the country has had severe budgetary woes of late. And the far-right party I mentioned, Jobbik, has converted these disappointments into questions about the country’s orientation to the West and, for good measure, about its supposed coddling of Jews, gays and Roma: Hungary’s trusty trinity of scapegoats.   This month Jobbik introduced a bill that refers to homosexuality as a perversion and bans its promotion in language so vague, opponents say, that two men or two women holding hands in public could theoretically be imprisoned. 

[T]he Jobbik magazine, a recent issue of which had an article extolling the party’s effort to stop Budapest’s gay pride parade, the kind of degenerate event that’s too blithely tolerated in other E.U. countries, the article maintained.  “Deviant West, Normal East,” was the headline. The cover story mentioned historical accounts of Jews using Christian blood in rites. “Whether this is true or not,” the story said, is unknown.

Hungary’s Rush Toward Autocracy and Legalized Homophobia

The nation of Hungry is rapidly morphing into something ugly and reminiscent of the former communist regime under Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his political cronies. Equally disturbing is the embrace of homophobia under the nation's new constitution which not only restricts marriage to heterosexuals but also fails to provide protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. As wonderful as Budapest and some of the other tourism opportunities might be in Hungry, it has certainly been added to my list of places to avoid like the plague. These developments which flout human rights and basic civil rights comprise a huge challenge to the European Union to which Hungry is a member. The Washington Post looks at the rise of autocracy while Gay Star News looks at the abysmal situation for LGBT citizens. Look closely, because this is the type of regime the Christianists and far right would seek to impose on America. First these highlights from the Washington Post:

WHILE THE European Union has been focused on the debt problems of Greece and Italy, a potentially more profound challenge has been developing in the Central European nation of Hungary, a former part of the Soviet bloc that now belongs to NATO and the European Union. Hungary, which still uses its own currency, the forint, is flirting with insolvency.

But Hungary has another problem too: Its right-wing nationalist government has launched an assault on its democratic system of government. Using a two-thirds majority in parliament, it has pushed through a new constitution as well as a series of fundamental laws that give the ruling party sweeping powers over the judiciary, the media, churches and the central bank. With the new charter and laws taking effect Jan. 1, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban now more resembles the autocratic regimes of Russia and Belarus than fellow E.U. democracies.

All but 14 religious denominations have been denied official recognition; those losing tax-exempt status and state school payments include the Episcopal and Methodist churches, several Jewish congregations, and all Muslim sects. A leading opposition radio station was denied a license by a new media board controlled by Mr. Orban’s followers.

[Orban] pushed through many more laws during the last weeks of December, including one that strips the central bank of independence and another that fixes flat tax rates in a way that will make it hard for future governments to alter them. This has given leverage to the European commission, because E.U. treaties require central bank independence. With the Hungarian government in desperate need of financing, Brussels and the International Monetary Fund have made clear no help will be forthcoming unless the laws are changed.

The new laws governing the judiciary, religious bodies and the media are incompatible with basic human rights and democratic checks and balances. For the European Union to tolerate them in a member state would be a breach of the community’s essential character.

As for the particular plight of LGBT Hungarians under the Orban regime and its foul constitution, here are highlights from Gay Star News:

The constitution that was voted on 18 April 2011 has thus now come into force; Article L of the constitution defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, while Article XV.2 excludes sexual orientation from the protected grounds of discrimination (but does have provision for protection on the basis of race and gender).

In essence the new constitution would make it very difficult for gay and lesbian people to gain marriage equality in the near future and provides no protection for LGBT people from unfair dismissal or hate crimes.

In addition, the power of constitution courts has been curbed. Previously a law or act could be annulled by petitioning to the constitutional courts via non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or civil society organizations.

‘The Family Protection Bill basically excludes same-sex couples, and makes provisions on inheritance which may result in registered same-sex partners losing their rights to inheritance.

‘The law also states that all “media services should broadcast programs that respect the institution of marriage and family”. That “sounds” neutral but we are concerned it would be used in the media and internet against any material that has a pro-LGBT point of view.’ . . . ‘Despite such bad news,’ remarked Dombos, ‘there is a ray of hope, LGBT rights is now a mainstream issue embraced by the opposition.’

Hungary Sending a "Gays Not Wanted" Message

While more and more nations and cities seem to want to welcome the pink tourism dollar (for God's sake, even generally reactionary Richmond, Virginia has launched a LGBT tourism page), the nation of Hungary seems hell bent to chase away gays. Not only has a pride event been banned in Budapest for the lame excuse of traffic disruption, but anti-gay legislation seems to be advancing even in the face of what would appear to be an open violation of European Union requirements concerning equality for all citizens. Indeed. one would think that NOM or FRC were guiding legislative policy in the country. With plenty of LGBT friendly nations to visit in Europe, Hungary would seem to be a country to avoid when planning one's itinerary. Here are some highlights from Pink Paper on the backward slide that seems to be occurring:
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Police in Budapest banned the 2011 lesbian and gay Pride March, yesterday – because it would hinder the flow of traffic. The event, scheduled for 18 June, is considered the highlight of the gay calendar. Now, ILGA-Europe claim the decision is a clear breach of the right of freedom and assembly.
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Peaceful LGBTI Pride Marches have taken place in Budapest for several years. However, during the last few years the participants of Budapest Pride March experienced attacks by nationalist and right wing extremists.
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The European Court of Human Rights made it clear that gay people are equally entitled to the right to peaceful assembly and expression and that the state and the police have a positive obligation to protect queer public events from violent attacks by the opponents.
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The ban on Pride March adds to our concerns with the deteriorating situation for LGBTI in Hungary. Currently there is a proposal to amend the country’s Constitution to limit the scope of marriage to one man and one woman with the effect of banning the possibility of a future opening of marriage to same-sex couples.
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Moreover, a draft media law is currently being revised after heavy criticism from the EU aimed to prevent among other things same-sex affections in the media. We believe that represents dangerous signal not only to gay people in Hungary, but also across the EU. We call upon EU institutions and member states to remind Hungary of its duties and about the EU fundamental principles of equality, non-discrimination and respect for human rights for all.”

Hungary legalizes same-sex civil partnerships

What can I say other than that as the rest of the modern world moves forward, the USA as a nation lags behind in gay rights instead of being a leader in freedom and liberty. Worse yet, in Virginia, home of leading founding fathers who championed religious freedom and civil liberties, during the last few years steps have been actively taken to strip gay couples of rights. Here are highlights from a Reuters.com story (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1861742220071218):

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary's parliament passed a law late on Monday that allows same-sex couples to register a civil partnership with many of the rights and obligations of marriage. Registered couples will have the same rights as married heterosexual couples in inheritance, taxation and other financial matters. But they will not be allowed to adopt children, unlike married couples.

After decades under communist rule when homosexuality was banned or simply out of sight, it is far less widely accepted in Eastern Europe than in most of Western Europe. The Czech Republic and Slovenia allow same-sex partnerships to be registered, but none of the former communist states allow gay marriages.