Sue Coe, Touchless Fascism, 2024. Courtesy the artist.

Preface: Emigre politics

When writers go into exile, I read somewhere, they discuss the politics of their former countries more than before they left. I have an image of that in my head – scruffy emigres huddled over coffee and schnapps in a smoke-filled café. Voices are raised, tables are pounded, and drinks are spilled, before a quiet settles on the group — the silence of displacement.

My writer friends here in Norwich are all British, and they don’t go in for fist pounding. Their take on American politics is mostly expressed in eyerolls and feigned shock. They always knew, they seem to be saying, there was something terribly the matter with the U.S; now it’s wrongs are laid bare. “You’re the American,” they say, “what do you think?” In the quiet that follows those conversations, I don’t feel displaced, just a little nauseous.

1. Fascism is embarrassing

The press and liberal politicians have responded with suitable alarm to the Trump administration’s attacks upon education, the environment, law, non-profits, immigrants, the economy (tariffs) and the courts. They have described violations of due process, and the threat of authoritarianism. They have predicted recession, inflation, or stagflation, and warned about the costs to the nation–material, intellectual, cultural-of the deportation or exclusion of immigrants.

Trump’s onslaught has been relentless, and no one is safe. If legal residents – immigrants and students – protected by the first amendment, are subject to deportation because of their speech, so are birthright or naturalized citizens. If law firms are punished for their selection of clients, no one can be confident of obtaining legal representation when they need it. If research scientists can have their funding cut for ignoring Trump administration priorities, then nobody can be sure public health and safety are protected; if non-profits are targeted for their charitable work, how many people will step up to fill the gaps left by a tattered social safety net?

Just before the 2024 election, the words fascist or Nazi were beginning to be used by Democratic politicians – including Joe Biden and Kamela Harris – to describe Trump. Those terms have now largely disappeared from public discourse. The savants say they were politically ineffective, turning off the very voters who most needed to be engaged. There’s no evidence to back up those claims. I think the real reason is different: the wolf at the door has taken up residence in our living rooms, and that fact is simply too shameful to acknowledge. A majority of American voters freely elected a fascist, an approbation even Hitler never received. What’s more, they elected a congress willing to disable itself to enable him. Who would want to admit such things?

2. Universal tariffs — a Hitlerian policy

Since inauguration, Trump has done everything he can to cement his power. That’s what dictators do. In Hitler’s time, the process was called Gleichschaltung, meaning stabilization or bringing into alignment. The Reichstag (parliament), the courts, businesses, education, law, unions, the police and military, and the organs of civil society, including charities and arts organizations, were all made to toe the Nazi line. Many did so willingly. Those that didn’t were steamrolled or destroyed.

Hitler accomplished Gleichschaltung in a matter of months. Trump has been in office just four months and has already managed to dismantle entire government agencies and subvert well-established consumer, investor, civil and environmental protections. He has disbanded U.S.A.I.D., the government’s largest provider of foreign aid, and brought to heel some of the nation’s biggest law firms and a few of its wealthiest universities. It’s a veritable Anschluss, and as with Austria, those who accede to the dictator will remain in his thrall for as long as he’s in power. Trump has been less successful so-far, however, in accomplishing what got him elected: improving the economy by reducing prices.

Trump’s economic policies appear at first glance conventional. By embracing the budget framework put forward by the U.S. House – which slashes about $1.5 trillion in spending — Trump plants himself firmly in the camp of austerity. That’s the policy of every Republican since Herbert Hoover. The theory behind it is roughly as follows: Cut spending to reduce the supply of money and lower inflation and interest rates. That makes it easier for businesses to borrow to invest in new enterprises and produce more goods and services. That in turn, increases hiring and raises salaries (because of competition for workers) and improves the general welfare of the nation.

In fact, austerity never works like that. Cuts in spending reduce both employment levels and the social safety net, disempowering workers, and emboldening businesses to lower salaries. Eventually, a lack of consumer demand idles factories and services, propelling the economy into recession. The crisis can be long or short, depending upon outside forces available of to stem the crisis – war or militarization, a major government stimulus, a large increase of credit, or a paradigm changing technology. Under monopoly capitalism, as Paul Sweezy wrote, “stagnation is the norm, good times the exception.” In recent years, the economy has been propped up by enormous profits in the financial sector, but little of that has trickled down to the mass of the population; thus, the continued anger and........

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