If the leader of an increasingly fascistic movement can attempt a coup and incite a violent insurrection only to return to power four years later, without ever facing real consequences and while explicitly promising to establish a vindictive autocracy, democracy will not persist.
https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history/113430722408706093

The lesson from U.S. history, if there is one, is not that progress is impossible. There has been tremendous progress at times! But we must not assume directionality in history. There is no arc, there is no linear progression, no utopian end goal we are destined to reach somehow.

Weekend reading:

The combination of a deep-seated mythology of American exceptionalism, progress gospel, (willful) historical ignorance, and a lack of political imagination has created a situation in which a lot of people simply refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously.

This week’s piece:

It Could Definitely Happen Here

Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right

(thomaszimmer.substack.com)

People need to accept that things can change – in either direction: It really could get much, much worse.

But it could also get better. There is nothing inevitable about either doom or progress. We are neither fated nor guaranteed to experience the status quo for all eternity.

That is why Reconstruction is such a key historical reference. America’s first attempt at biracial democracy was quickly drowned in ostensibly “race-neutral” laws and escalating white reactionary violence. It took a century to get the country back to that level of democracy.

We must not assume directionality in history at all. There is no arc, and there definitely is no ironclad law of the universe that says “We” can’t slide back – or slide forward into a new kind of authoritarianism.

And because the anti-egalitarian, anti-pluralistic ideas didn’t just vanish into thin air with the passage of civil rights legislation of 1964/65, the conflict over whether or not democracy should be allowed to endure and prosper has been the central fault line in U.S. politics ever since.

But the political system that was stable for most of U.S. history was a white man’s democracy, or racial caste democracy. There is absolutely nothing old or consolidated about *multiracial, pluralistic democracy* in America. It only started less than 60 years ago.

There is a pervasive idea that in a country like the United States, with a supposedly centuries-long tradition of stable, consolidated democracy, authoritarianism simply has not realistic chance to succeed, that “We” have never experienced authoritarianism.

I wrote about the disastrous mix of a deep-seated mythology of American exceptionalism, progress gospel, lack of political understanding, and (willful) historical ignorance that has created a situation in which a lot of people simple refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously.

It Could Definitely Happen Here
 
Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.
 
New piece:
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/it-could-definitely-happen-here

Crucial piece by Mike Podhorzer on how polls are obscuring the extremist nature of Trump’s plans.

I’ll add a related thought: Since the mainstream discourse stipulates that extremism must be “fringe” in America, anything that has broad support is reflexively sanitized as *not* extremism.

Poll-Washing Trump's Fascist Plans

What Voters Don't Know About "Mass Deportation" Can Hurt Us All

(www.weekendreading.net)

Mere weeks before the election, I revisit the Fascism Debate and discuss where we stand after Trump has, even by his own standards, gone on a rampage recently. If anyone thought more evidence was needed before we could call it fascist, the Trumpists have certainly provided it. 2/

Weekend reading: I wrote about Donald Trump’s closing pitch to the American people: Rage, intimidation, and vengeful violence.
 
He is threatening – or promising, if you ask his supporters – fascism. No more plausible deniability for anyone who refuses to see the threat.

This week’s piece:
 
🧵1/
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/donald-trump-american-fascist

This situation is acutely dangerous, because it means that for the foreseeable future, the fate of democracy - not merely in an abstract, formalistic way, but with all the fundamental rights and respect for pluralism by which it should be defined - is on the ballot in every single election.
https://mastodon.social/@tzimmer_history/113272196658840533

The stakes in 2024: Democracy itself has become a partisan issue.

The fundamental reality of American politics right now: The conflict over whether or not the country should actually be a democracy maps onto the conflict between the two major parties. 1/