Greg Guma / For Preservation & Change: Rendezvous with Fascism: Assessing the Damage

Twelve authors and books that illuminate the darkness: The Anatomy of Fascism, Mussolini’s Italy, Trump/Russia, Insane Clown President, The Road to Unfreedom, Dark Star Rising, The Death of Truth, Fire and Fury, Fear, Dictator, It Can’t Happen Here, and The Golden House.

Unprecedented. We’ve heard the word so often during the last four years that it has become a cliche. But is it completely true? Or have we seen some of this before? And if that’s so, are we experiencing a temporary authoritarian surge or something deeper and longer-lasting? It’s hard to be certain, about that or much else. But here are twelve authors and books that illuminate the current darkness, and explore what came before.

In The Anatomy of Fascism, for example, Robert O. Paxton illustrates the differences between two isms, fascism and authoritarianism, and shows how our modern anxieties — from immigration and economic insecurity to so-called urban "decadence" and national decline — create conditions for mass-based, populist nationalist movements. Written before the recent surge of propaganda, hate crimes and "strongman" regimes in places like Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines and now the US, Paxton's study outlines how fascists gain and exercise power. He also identifies the obvious warning signs: political deadlock in the face of domestic crisis, threatened conservatives desperate for tough allies and ready to abandon the rule of law, and charismatic leaders ready to "mobilize passions" through race-tinged demagoguery. Check, check, and check.

On the other hand, Paxton also advises that most real capitalists, even if they see democracy as a nuisance, would prefer an authoritarian to a fascist leader. Why? The former usually want a passive, disengaged public, he argues. But fascists, who have such contempt for both people and reason that they don't even bother to justify their excesses, tend to get more people excited and engaged. Double check.

Traces and Echoes

Reading Mussolini’s Italy, a rich and revealing history of life under fascist rule, it was hard not to be reminded of Donald Trump. As Richard Bosworth shows, Mussolini's brand of fascism was powered more by charisma than policies, and drew from a widespread sense of victimhood that fueled aggression, authoritarian quick fixes, and a desperate yearning to recapture a glorious, yet mythical past. While World War II ended the Duce's tyranny, it certainly did not excise fascism's totalitarian approach and mindset. Unfortunately, traces and strong echoes can be seen today in most democracies.

Like a necessary prequel, Trump/Russia: A Definitive History provides the little-known backstory for our predicament — a sordid tale of organized crime, shape-shifting oligarchs and money laundering. As Seth Hettena shows, one of Trump’s biggest lies was his protest about having nothing to do with Russia. It’s precisely the opposite. Russia was his piggy bank and object of desire for decades. And his election was a perfect storm, fueled by the combined force of his narcissism and greed and Putin’s thirst for respect and revenge.

Insane Clown President, a snappy chronicle of the 2016 race, follows the campaign that may have ended democracy "as we know it." One of the unintended take aways, however, is that it’s possible to be both smart and wrong — sometimes in the same sentence. I’m talking about author Matt Taibbi. Like many journalists, he was both fascinated and repulsed by the rise of Trump, yet repeatedly predicted that his victory simply couldn't happen.

This type of campaign "diary" could be depressing and redundant. But Taibbi’s sense of the absurd, combined with an earnest passion that might have embarrassed Hunter Thompson, keep the pages turning right up to the "unbelievable" climax.

Hostile Takeover

The Road to Unfreedom should come with a warning: Abandon your illusions, since they aren’t likely to survive. Building on ideas introduced in a previously released pocket guide to surviving tyranny, Timothy Snyder describes the last six years as a period of shattering change that has led Russia, America and parts of Europe into what he calls schizofascism, or, in Trump’s case, possibly “sado-populism.” It’s an engaging, and deeply disturbing, tour of the political landscape.

A core concept for Snyder is the shift — with strategic nudges by the Putin gang — from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity. Inevitability politicians argue that specifics of the past are ultimately irrelevant, merely grist for progress; Eternity politicians see endless cycles of threat, victimhood, and restoration, and have a penchant for supressing facts, dismissing reality, and creating political fiction.

“Americans were vulnerable to the politics of eternity,” Snyder explains, “because their own experiences had already weakened inevitability. Trump’s proposal to ‘make America great again’ resonated with people who believed, along with him, that the American dream was dead. Russia had reached the politics of eternity first, and so Russians knew the techniques that would push Americans in the same direction.”

Concise, pithy, inspiring and pocket-sized, Snyder’s other contribution, On Tyranny, is a guide to survival (with some dignity) in the Trump era, one that hits all the right notes and historical moments. Arranging observations and advice as a To-Do list, he doesn’t sugar-coated the situation. "Our time is certainly out of joint," Snyder writes, echoing Hamlet, because "we have forgotten history." And now we face a rough passage from confused democracy to a "cynical sort of fascist oligarchy." Still, the young can make new and better history, he predicts, if they know enough about it. We are beginning to see signs of that transformation.

Looking back, however, it certainly wasn’t raw intelligence that catapulted an infamous celebrity / mob boss into the White House. In Dark Star Rising, Gary Lachman makes the case for something deeper and darker than a corrupt campaign, succeeding with the aid of Russian info-war and “active measures.” If half what he reports is true, we’re in bigger trouble than we think.

Call it chaos magic, positive thinking or New Thought, hidden forces may well have helped reshape the global “narrative” and primed mass conscousness for a postmodern authoritarian wave. At the center of this hostile takeover, claims Lachman, is Alexander Dugin, Putin’s Rasputin, a professional conspiracy theorist who brought his fascinations together in a “mosaic of ideologies” that centers on the rise of Eurasia. Dugin’s aim, which fit well with the tactics and goals of the alt-right, was apparently to “break the reality barrier” and “make things happen.” This short, unsettling book suggests that he and others did just that.

Whatever the truth, for those who continue to doubt that we’re in the midst of a radical global realignment — destruction of the so-called “world order” created after World War II and emergence of a “post-truth” authoriarian alliance — The Death of Truth provides a concise, potent overview that should settle the issue. Using a literary and historical lense, Michiko Kakutani describes how it was done, largely by Russia but beginning long before Trump’s hostile takeover, and also why there’s no guarantee that truth will make a comeback anytime soon.

Inside Stories

Like the reality TV presidency it chronicles, Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury is basically a showcase for the crass motives and strange doings of its quirky subjects. It’s a pleasantly voyeuristic ride through the early Trump White House, as long as you don’t expect too much.

Starting with some convincing evidence that neither Donald Trump nor his minions actually wanted to win, Wolff’s book tracks the power dynamics pulling at our accidental president, mainly from the perspective of another Rasputin-like figure, Steve Bannon. The other main factions included “establishment” Republicans like Reince Preibus — doomed to humiliation — and Trump’s family and friends, the so-called “moderates” labeled Jarvanka. Covering the first nine months of Trump’s misrule, the book’s pace is brisk, sprinkled generously with deadly barbs and Trump’s own tantrums and word salad — some of Wolff’s best evidence that we are trapped in a comic book nightmare.

Even if you have paid attention Bob Woodward’s latest expose, Fear, adds some fresh insights. The title refers to Trump’s core belief that fear is the source of “real power.” Focusing largely on how key policies have been handled, specifically trade, North Korea and the Middle East, Woodward serves up key incidents and stunning dialogues that showcase the President’s resistance to any facts or information that conflict with his instincts and often bizarre assumptions.

To be completely frank, some of Trump’s half-formed ideas are worth considering, for example that the US military should withdraw from Afghanistan and South Korea. But his motives and behavior are so shocking that they undermine even those reasonable goals. Woodward ends with a riveting meeting between Robert Mueller and Trump’s legal team. That encounter shows why even getting him to testify under oath would be pointless.

Imagining the Worst

So, how does a republic fall? And are we there yet? As retold by Cicero's scribe in Dictator, the final installment of Robert Harris’ remarkable ancient Rome trilogy, it can begin with ambition, hubris and endemic corruption. All three sound familiar. Harris doesn’t downplay Cicero's fatal weaknesses, but also dramatizes some of his greatest triumphs as he struggles to protect Rome, first from Julius Ceasar, and later from Marc Antony and his rival, Ceasar's adopted son Octavian. The writing is vivid and the dialogue surprisingly contemporary. But it's the central story that makes the novel compelling — Rome's slow descent into violence and repression.

In another work of essential fiction, It Can’t Happen Here, the protagonist is a more modest figure. Doremus Jessup is a cranky Vermont newspaper editor who sees a day coming when freedom, constitutional rights and truth itself are lost in the United States. In Sinclair Lewis' prescient 1936 novel, Jessup and his friends in Fort Beulah, Vermont watch aghast as a racist, flag-waving demagogue wins the presidential election and establishes a repressive regime much like Nazi Germany. Soon the most liberal members of the Supreme Court resign, replaced by unknown lawyers who call President Buzz Windrip by his first name. And that's just the first act in an epic political drama about repression and resistance.

Popular as novel in the late 1930s, It Can’t Happen Here was adapted for stage and had a highly successful run as part of the Federal Writers' Project. But the cautious pre-war climate in Hollywood derailed a film project, and the story line remained too-hot-to-handle for decades. It later became the inspiration for a TV series, V, but there the Fascists were replaced by aliens. It eventually also inspired the sci fi film V for Vendetta.

At the time too few people heeded Lewis' satirical warning. Appeasement, collaboration and indecision continued as Mussolini took control of Albania, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and as Hitler repudiated the Versailles treaty and set up pacts with the other two Axis powers. Nevertheless, Lewis’ analysis of mass psychology remains highly relevant. The tyranny he imagined did not emerge in the US before or during World War II. But Lewis’s book remains highly resonant, despite a dated rural setting and some clunky dialogue.

A more subtle form of fascism, what philosopher Bertram Gross named "friendly fascism," has been developing ever since. We've seen clear manifestations in the militaristic, media-fueled reign of Donald Trump, a brutal nationalist approach to politics and governance anticipated in Lewis' dystopian vision. After more than 80 years, his classic novel retains its punch and is rapidly becoming required reading again.

And finally, in The Golden House, Salman Rushdie creates a vivid new American nightmare that rings too true for comfort, one peppered with chilling reflections like this:

“The Internet was still full of lies and the business of the truth was broken. The best had lost all conviction and the worst were filled with passionate intensity and the weakness of the just was revealed by the wrath of the unjust. But the Republic remained more or less intact. Let me just set that down because it was a statement often made to comfort those of us who were not easily to be comforted. It’s a fiction in a way, but I repeat it.

“I know that after the storm, another storm, and then another. I know that stormy weather is the forecast forever and happy days aren’t here again and intolerance is the new black and the system really is rigged not only in the way the evil clown has tried to make us believe. Sometimes the bad guys win and what does one do when the world one believes in turns out to be a paper moon and a dark planet rises and says, No, I am the world.

“How does one live amongst one’s fellow countrymen and countrywomen when you don’t know which of them is numbered among the sixty-million-plus who brought the horror to power, when you can’t tell who should be counted among the ninety-million-plus who shrugged and stayed home, or when your fellow Americans tell you that knowing things is elitist and they hate elites, and all you have ever had is your mind and you were brought up to believe in the loveliness of knowledge, not that knowledge-is-power nonsense but knowledge is beauty, and then all of that, education, art, music, film, becomes a reason for being loathed, and the creature out of Spiritus Mundi rises up and slouches toward Washington, D.C., to be born.”