Biden's bold stand against Trump's MAGA extremism

President Biden mounted a broadside attack on former president Trump and his MAGA cult. He warned, “There is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it”.

Yesterday, Biden spoke in Arizona at an event to honor Republican Senator John McCain, one of the few high-profile Republicans publicly speaking out against Trump and his policies before he died in 2018. The New York Times has the story here.

Chaos, unemployment, and societal divisions

I’m glad Biden chose this more aggressive approach; it was about time. But I also admire how he has managed not to do so for such a long time and to focus on government. And what a good president he is: he delivered on social-economic policies that Trump promised to his blue-collar voters but forgot about the day he was elected. Instead, Trump brought chaos, unemployment, and societal divisions that will take many years to heal.

In the annals of history, the rise of fascism has often been marked by the sinister strategy of creating chaos to undermine democracy and seize power. It’s a chilling pattern we’ve witnessed in the past, and these days, the echoes of this dark history reverberate through the news. Although there are differences, and history will never fully repeat itself, it is easy to discern unsettling parallels between the tactics of past fascists and the actions of Trump and his MAGA-Republican allies.

Eroding democracy

Populism thrives in times of chaos, so, unsurprisingly, creating chaos is in many populists’ toolboxes to ride the political waves to grab power in a weakened democracy. In the days that Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and other countries fell into the hands of authoritarian regimes, there existed a playbook of manipulation and subversion. These regimes employed tactics to erode democratic values and sow the seeds of totalitarianism.

They championed a mythical past, one they promised to make great again, while skillfully using propaganda to control the narrative. Violence became a weapon, incited and directed towards those who opposed them or to the symbols of democracy. Minorities were targeted as part of a broader strategy to create divisions within society.

Darkness

These tactics were not confined to speeches, propaganda, or clever use of a new medium like the radio in the 1920s and 1930s; they took concrete forms in coups, rigged elections, and terror campaigns by proud boys in their black and brown shirts who had joined the Squadristi and the S.A. Figures like Hitler and Mussolini effectively used these tools with devastating results; they grabbed the power in their nations only to plunge them into darkness.

Fast forward to the present, and ignoring the disconcerting similarities is impossible. Little had I imagined the impact of the surreal scene in 2015 when Donald Trump announced his candidacy. He descended a golden escalator at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City to speak to a small crowd of supporters, staff, reporters, and paid actors.

His speech served as a warning for what was to come in the years that followed. Like previous masters of manipulation, it was controversial and divisive, as he accused Mexico of sending rapists to the U.S. who brought with them drugs and crime. And since the playbook requires references to some mystical past, he promised to “make America great again” without specifying to which period of greatness he was referring.

The first of 30,000 lies

And as a stark warning for what was to come in the years that followed, his first words were a lie. “Wow. Woah. That is some group of people. Thousands!” said Trump to an audience of dozens, some of whom had been paid 50 dollars to cheer and wear T-shirts with supportive texts. It would not be his last lie.

The Washington Post kept count of his false or misleading statements and caught Trump 30,573 times during his four years as president of the United States. That is a staggering average of 21 lies per day. Favorite topics to lie about were the economy, tax cuts, and the “stolen” 2020 election.

In his last speech as president, he claimed credits for the largest tax cut and reform in the history of our country, but Reagan has that doubtful honor. He lied about his successes in job creation while the jobless numbers grew from 6.7 percent to 14; on his watch, the U.S. reached the worst unemployment numbers since the Great Depression. Indeed, in his own words: “Absolutely incredible.”

The list is far longer than this platform allows me to write, and it would not be interesting to hear all these repeated. Twenty-one lies per day; think about it. There may be no person in the world who has never lied in his or her life, but imagine that number. Did you ever have even one day in your life where you lied 21 times? What kind of person would it make you?

Attacking the pillars of a free society

Trump and his Republican MAGA allies have not hesitated to challenge democratic norms. They’ve questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, incited the January 6 insurrection, and continue to relentlessly attack the pillars of a free society: the media and the judiciary.

Their arsenal includes spreading falsehoods and conspiracy theories, eroding public trust in institutions, and attempting to impeach President Biden. These tactics bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the past, invoking memories of fascist strategies.

President Biden didn’t refer to the dark past of fascism, nor did he put such a label on Trump’s policies; he did better than that by just naming all the dangerous elements in Trump’s policies that we all recognize. But I’m in the far easier position of not being a head of state who aims to heal deep societal divisions. Early on in Trump’s rise to power, I saw that he looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, so I labeled MAGA and its leader as fascist until proven otherwise. Even one of the Republican hopefuls to become their party’s candidate for the next Presidential elections in yesterday’s debating show called him Donald Duck, although in a different context of ducking responsibility.

Don't forget the lessons of history

Confronting this disquieting parallel makes it crucial to recognize the dangers. The specter of fascism looms large, and its implications for American democracy and the rest of the world are profound. The erosion of trust in elections, the rejection of facts, and the embrace of authoritarian tactics threaten the very foundations of our system, worries that President Biden has publicly shared in a more outspoken manner than I ever heard him before.

In this critical moment, the lessons of history should not be forgotten. I can’t think of any country that progressed toward a better society by following a populist roadmap like the one embraced by the MAGA cult. Trump’s first four-year try-out in Washington hasn’t given any assurance that he is the stable pair of hands the U.S. and the world needs in the White House. The shadow of fascism’s past should serve as a stark warning, urging us to defend the democracy we hold dear. As so often, Biden did the right thing today by fighting to preserve our democratic ideals. He did so in words that left nothing unsaid because the consequences of complacency are too dire to ignore.