J.M. Berger wrote a book called Extermism for the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series. Here's a quote:
Extremism refers to the belief that an in-group's success or survival can never be separated from the need for hostile action against an out-group. The hostile action must be part of the in-group's definition of success. Hostile acts can range from verbal attacks and diminishment to discriminatory behavior, violence, and even genocide. This is obviously a very wide spectrum of activity, which will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters.
Sound familiar?
There are a lot of horrible things happening now. Our government is being systematically torn apart. Our alliances are being violated in ways that will make it difficult or impossible for us to restore trust, Our research universities, until now the greatest in the world, are under attack, and are suffering very real damage. Their ability to pull the most talented students from around the world, which again has contributed so much to our prosperity, is being destroyed.
I could go on. Many things are happening. I could talk about medical research, public health, the betrayal of our national interests to enemies and adversaries, or the Proud Boys, political street brawlers in the tradition of the 20th century's fascist colored shirt movements.
But the thing that scares me the most is the demonization of migrants, the orchestrated campaign of hate and lies that's being mounted against them. It's the out-group that convinces me that what we're seeing now isn't mere authoritarianism, that it's something worse.
The things we are doing to migrants now, and even to tourists, are evil. The day will come, sooner than we think, when we will be ashamed of them.
Adam Serwer wrote an article for The Atlantic called The Cruelty Is the Point. More recently, during a podcast Ben Wittes said something along the lines of, it's not just the cruelty, it's the performance of cruelty. I'm sorry I can't give an accurate quote. But it's not enough to send migrants to be tortured in El Salvadore, it's necessary to produce images of it. Kristi Noem has to have her photo taken, standing in front of the cages in the prison.
There are lots of moving pieces here. We've got the out-group, which serves several functions. It defines the movement, establishes its purpose. It also defines the in-group. In order to belong to the in-group you have to be on board with the war on the out-group. If you're not, you're an enemy of the people.
The in-group is organized as a kind of hierarchical personality cult, with the leader at the top, and various sub-alterns below, the movement's patriots. Membership in the in-group requires loyalty to the leader, not to the constitution or the country, because the leader is the only one who is able to win the war against the out-group. And that war is existential. The other day Elon said the Wisconsin Supreme Court race "might decide the future of America and Western Civilization".
And there's the transformation of political events into aesthetic experiences, the rallies, the photos of the prisoners, the experience of seeing ICE trucks parked outside of your kid's school. There wasn't any analog to that in the old days when they passed something like a farm subsidy bill.
I don't think fascism is an ideology, or a set of coherent beliefs. That's why it has so many contradictions, the populism and the tax cuts for billionaries. For society as a whole, it's a process, a collapse or transformation that happens to a polity. The resulting system isn't stable, it doesn't endure, but it commits terrible crimes, with many victims, and destroys the society in which it occurs. The severity of these things varies, with Germany being an outlier. I don't expect our fascism to be as bad as Germany's, or even close. But it will still be terrible, for both our victims, and eventually for us.
I think that for an individuals who gets swept up into the movement, it's an experience that provides meaning, the feeling of belonging and connection. And that's where I think the aestheticization of the things that are happening comes in.
I'm frightened because I believe we have abandonned small-l liberalism, and have begun to walk down a path that many nations have gone down before us, and which has never ended well for anyone. The path has been studied and described, and the things that are happening to us now fit the descriptions.
Published: 2025-04-02
Tagged: blog
Since this is my first post, I'd like to try to explain why I've decided to start writing.
The first few weeks of Trump's second term have been stresful. He's introducing many changes to American life and governance, most of which terrify me. A lot of people, including me, seem to be intimidated.
I understand that no one cares about my political opinions, and I'm not claiming that my feelings are reasonable. But it seems necessary to put something out in the world. Speaking up is useless, but not saying anything is cowardly.
Why blog instead of something else? The big tech companies and their platforms haven't exactly been covering themselves in glory lately, so a self-hosted blog seemed like the way go.
So here we are.
Published: 2025-03-08
Tagged: blog