We are living under a fascist government. This is a statement that once accepted, bears immediate moral responsibilities.
Fascism is a far-right ideology emphasizing authoritarianism, militarism, nationalism and racial supremacy. The Trump Administration fits all these categories. Our President has ignored and undermined Congress, violated the Constitution, preached hateful and dehumanizing nationalist rhetoric and engaged in an ethnic cleansing of the United States.
Worries about the democratic nature of the United States are not new. Plenty of other presidents were war criminals, infringed upon constitutional rights, funded genocide or destabilized nations at the expense of civilians — they simply cared more about optics. Long before either Trump presidency, research determined that a small number of economic elites dictate federal and state policy at the expense of the working and middle classes — making the U.S. functionally an oligarchy.
Yet, even if Trump is just a symptom of a systemically unjust state, his uniquely blatant disregard for democracy leaves us with a heightened moral responsibility to oppose his administration. Further, Trump’s reveling in right-wing extremism and horrifyingly uncivil rhetoric provide an opportunity. The unsettling fact that, yes, it's fascism, engenders useful broad public outrage, dissolution and action.
My fellow columnist, Nina Davis, wrote an incredible article, Fascism, Now What?, that tackles the emotional turmoil of living under a fascist government. My addition is the Here’s What: the response to what that realization should be.
One solution that political theory and history offer is civil disobedience.
John Rawls, the famous theorist of liberal civil disobedience, defines it as illegal, political, conscientious, public and nonviolent. For Rawls, civil disobedience is morally obligated when unfair laws subject a minority to an unreasonable share of injustice, for instance, the racial discrimination and disenfranchisement of African Americans under Jim Crow.
However, Rawls specifies numerously in his A Theory of Justice that civil disobedience is only applicable in a “nearly just democratic regime.” For unjust regimes such as fascist ones, Rawls states, “There is no difficulty about such action [militant resistance] in this case. If any means to this end are justified, then surely nonviolent opposition is justified.” In the liberal framework, the point of civil disobedience is to strengthen nearly just democracies. This is not applicable in a fascist state as it is not a “nearly perfect” system with a few unjust laws, but a systematically immoral regime where both militant resistance and nonviolent opposition are therefore justified.
If liberal civil disobedience is not enough, what about republican civil disobedience?
The republican framework of civil disobedience, as espoused by Daniel Markovits in his essay Democratic Disobedience, stresses public participation. All democracies have natural deficits, such as legislation that was created without input or approval from the public due to corruption, excessive lobbying or a slow and hidden transformation of a previous policy. Civil disobedience, therefore, strengthens democracy through sparking re-engagement with legislation so that it can better represent the people’s will.
Yet, according to Markovits, civil disobedience still accepts the established authority. Its purpose is to strengthen the deficits in democracies, not overturn fascist governments.
The goal of nonviolent civil disobedience is to raise awareness about an issue and win public sympathy. The shift in popular opinion then pressures officeholders to enact legislative reform. However, we cannot trust the ‘legislative process’ of an undemocratic fascist government with a history of oligarchy. In a state that funds genocide, bombs civilians and terrorizes minorities, we have a duty to directly impede the ruling agenda.
The strategy for this systemic change — especially, regarding the use of violent versus nonviolent tactics — is another hotly contested issue. The applicable debate here regards which is more effective, since state terrorism and the blatant inhumanity of fascism make violent resistance morally justifiable as an act of self-defense.
According to research by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in Why Civil Resistance Works, nonviolence is historically more successful than violence in achieving the goals of a resistance movement because there are fewer participatory barriers. Violent organizations can only recruit physically fit members who are willing to use weapons, and they provide less public information. Consequently, nonviolent resistance draws a greater crowd of people who can then remove consent and cooperation from the political and economic structures of the state.
However, violence and nonviolence are a lot more fluid than this study defines. Violence is constant. It is a daily occurrence in a system that kills and injures through police brutality, lack of free medical care, environmental detriments and more. Further, nonviolent campaigns do not preclude the absence of violence. As in the case of the Civil Rights Movement, nonviolent direct action drew out the violence of Jim Crow, where police and white supremacists bloodily attacked protesters who then strategically chose not to strike back.
Under a fascist government, the most important characteristic of a movement is direct action, which allows for a diversity of tactics. Whether primarily violent or not, the aim should be to prevent the fascist state from being able to function and to place fear and pressure on those in power. For instance, this could mean directly preventing ICE agents from kidnapping immigrants (this deportation defense manual tells you how to successfully do so).
What does that mean for the preservation of the United States? The great American transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, argued about the United States that, “This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.” Nearly two centuries later, this same people must cease to terrorize its immigrant and minority populations, and cease to bomb or make war on foreign nations, though it cost them their existence as a people.
Mina Petrova '29 is a Freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences studying English, History, and Government. Her fortnightly column North Star studies the past and critiques the present, focusing on politics, protests and activism that strive toward a more equitable future. She can be reached at mpetrova@cornellsun.com.
