The Party of Complicity

The Republicans have become the party of fascism. In the run-up to this election, the Democrats established themselves as the party of complicity with fascism.

What does it mean to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a fascist, and yet do no more than urge people to vote against him? If indeed, Trump intends to introduce fascism to the United States—if, as he has explicitly promised, he will round up millions of people (“the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”), put the military on the streets to suppress protests, and use the court system to attack anyone who opposes him—then limiting oneself to merely electoral opposition means welcoming fascism with open arms.

When fascism is on the way, the appropriate thing to do is to organize underground networks of resistance, as Italian and French anti-fascists did in the 1920s and 1930s. The appropriate thing to do is to prepare to resist by any means necessary. Anything less is complicity.

Beefing up the institutions through which the fascists will enact their policies is complicity. Normalizing violence against the people that the fascists intend to target is complicity. Turning over the communications platforms via which people share information is complicity. Discouraging people from the kind of tactics one needs to fight against a fascist regime is complicity. Over the past four years, the Democrats have done every single one of these things.

The Democratic party leadership is already prepared to coexist with fascists, to be ruled by fascists. They would prefer fascism to another four years of tumultuous protests. Having a more authoritarian party in power gives them an alibi—it makes them look good by comparison, even as they are the ones channeling people out of the streets and paving the way for Trump to carry out his program.