Note: The posts for this past Wednesday and today are a two part review of Charles Pierce’s “Idiot America” and Dave Neiwert’s “The Eliminationists”. The two books are very different, but there’s enough overlap that a two part review made more sense than two completely distinct posts. Wednesday is more “Idiot America” and today is more “The Eliminationists”, but there’s discussion of both books in each post.
David Neiwert knows what real fascists are like. As an editor at the Sandpoint, Idaho Daily Bee in the late 1970s he and his colleagues initially decided to ignore the arrival of neo-Nazis and Aryan Nations types. Those assholes were drawn to Idaho, largely from places like Arizona and California according to Neiwert, because it afforded them a sanctuary. In the vast and scarcely populated open spaces of the west, in the – ahem – homeland, they could segregate themselves from the majority of Americans. They wanted to live apart from such undesirables as minorities and white people who think minorities are people too. At first the local media deliberately ignored them, believing that publicity was what they wanted. Then the violence started.
Neiwert explains:
What we didn’t understand was that the silence was interpreted as consent. And so, over the next several years, the Idaho Panhandle witnessed a parade of disturbing hate crimes (enough so that Idaho became one of the first states to pass a bias-crime law), ranging from the vandalization of a Jewish-owned restaurant to the harassment of mixed-race schoolchildren. There was also a procession of extraordinarily violent incidents, including the multistate rampage of murder and robbery by the neo-Nazi sect called The Order and the pipe-bombing campaigns planned by their successors. All of these acts emanated from the Aryan Nations.
Who are these people? Neiwert is very careful to point out that they are not caricatures. Most of them do not look out of place at the local supermarket, they hold regular jobs and are functioning members of society. They are neither stupid nor uneducated, quite the opposite. But they believe, and they will hold to these beliefs no matter what, that America is in irrevocable decline, that it’s everyone’s fault but theirs, and that things are coming to a head very soon.
Of course, this kind of apocalyptic thinking (literally in many cases, a lot of these people thought Y2K was going to end the world) is endemic to America, indeed to all civilizations. It is kept in check by the willingness of the rest of the citizenry, ordinary citizens and elites alike, to decry it. As Neiwert says, silence is consent; and prolonged silence allows groups like these to establish a toehold on legitimacy.
From that toehold, rancid and virulent ideas can begin to spread. Neiwert extensively documents the rise of AM talk radio as a conduit for radical thought into the mainstream. He showcases the way Republican politicians, most spectacularly Trent Lott but there have been many others, have more or less openly courted the neo-Confederate movement in the South. How “respectable” conservative outlets, such as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, traffic in provable falsehoods and aren’t called on it by similarly prestigious institutions. And then, of course, there’s cable news, where even the “liberal” network is overrun with conservative commentators who routinely spin themselves into a tizzy of fact free speculation.
Contra to what the more excitable elements of the left believe though, these things do not constitute fascism, not by a mile. Instead Neiwert describes them as “para-fascists”, people who, usually unwittingly, make it easier for something closer to actual fascism to take hold. They do this by undermining the legitimacy of their political opposition, not their political opposition’s ideas, but the actual people who constitute the opposition. To understand this concept, think for a minute about the alarmingly common phrase “real America”. It’s a seemingly innocuous term, one used by many mainstream politicians (notably Sarah Palin and Bush the Younger), but upon closer examination it has terrible implications. Because if there is a “real America” then there has to be an “other” America as well, one that doesn’t count and isn’t “real”; and that means that the members of that other America aren’t real either. This is the essence of eliminationism.
What is eliminationism? Eliminationism is when you cease to believe that your political opponents are legitimate members of the same political body as you. To bring this concept home, Neiwert devotes a solid 20% of his book, in one relentless and exhausting chapter, to eliminationism in American history. This includes the century long terrorization of black Americans by unofficial, semi-official and official racism, the gradual elimination of American Indians as independent nations, and the terrifically violent discrimination suffered by Asian immigrants on the West Coast, of which the Japanese internment during World War II is only the most famous example.
Eliminationism has its place in American history, and a violent and destructive one at that. And while it does not qualify as outright fascism it is one of the necessary precursors. Fascism isn’t armbands, brown shirts or other fashion statements, it isn’t massive political rallies or even a theory of government. It’s the belief that certain members of society aren’t members of society, the belief that this “other” has brought ruin, and that national rebirth is needed. In other words, fascism needs scapegoats and the targets of eliminationism provide them.
Of course, in today’s popular vernacular “fascism” is all but meaningless. It has been pressed into service with such reckless abandon by the left and the right that it has become a bloated catchall, meaningful only to those who misuse it. In a masterful display of careful research and precise writing Neiwert extracts the lost meaning of “fascism” and holds it aloft for all to see. It is not a pleasant sight.
(It must be noted here that Neiwert’s Orcinus is one of the Elder Blogs of the left, documenting radical speech since 2002, and that he is as familiar with Godwin’s Law as anyone who’s ever touched a keyboard. In a marvelous few pages near the end of the book Neiwert explains how the existence of Godwin’s Law has stifled a genuine understanding of what “fascism” really means. It’s a paradox. Godwin’s Law exists because “fascism” has become an all purpose insult, but by universally denying the use of the term most people are prevented from gaining a deeper understanding of it, thus perpetuating the continued misuse of the term.)
What makes Neiwert’s book realistic and relatable is his utter lack of hysteria. He isn’t out there peddling cheap analogies between Washington and Rome, he isn’t screaming about the ruins of the American Republic or wailing in anguish over the misguided direction we’ve all taken. He’s simply pointing out that while America is a long, long way from genuine fascism, the last few decades have seen steps along that grim path. Those steps are not irrevocable, nor do they mean we are destined for some blighted, racist future where only “real America” holds sway. But ignoring them, denying them, or calling them something other than they really are is a mistake and serves only as encouragement.
One is forced, at last, to think back to the Creation Museum, to Charles Pierce and his saddled dinosaur. The people behind that museum aren’t fascists. Even with all of their wild, irresponsible and destructive ideas they aren’t even close. But they have trained their minds to see the impossible as irrefutable, discounting facts which do not fit and inventing ones that do. As harmless and hilarious as these people are, if their mentality of certitude is pointed in a slightly different direction it can become dangerous, anti-democratic and ultimately deadly.
Stifling their ideas, stopping them from expounding upon their wild theories, is un-American and wouldn’t work anyway. What is needed is ridicule and deconstruction. Their ideas must be taken apart and held aloft so the rest of us can point and laugh. Read Pierce for the ridicule and Neiwert for the deconstruction.
