It’s Time for Progressives to Unite Against the Fascistic Republican Party

Six months ago, people on the left in France faced a crucial choice. None
of their candidates had gotten enough votes to make it into the
presidential runoff election. On the upcoming ballot were the neoliberal
president Emmanuel Macron and the neofascist challenger Marine Le Pen, who
had trailed the incumbent in the first round by less than 5 percent. What
to do?

Rather than sit out the decisive election and enable the far-right
candidate to take power, millions of leftist voters held their nose and
voted for Macron.

Now, in the United States, progressives face similar choices. In key House
districts and states with

pivotal Senate races

— including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire,
North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — leftist voters could
tip the balance of congressional power. At this point, in the balloting
that ends on Nov. 8, the choice is binary:

neoliberalism

or

neo-fascism

.

While the GOP is in a strong position to win a majority in the House of
Representatives, the latest polling indicates that control of the Senate is

on a knife’s edge

. No doubt Sen. Mitch McConnell is hoping that enough progressives won’t
vote for Democrats so he can run the place starting in January.

You don’t have to tell me how corporately awful the Democratic Party
leadership is. On foreign policy, other than on such matters as climate and
the Iran nuclear deal, the two major parties have similar approaches,
including widely destructive militarism. But on domestic matters — while
the Democrats’ tepid reformism falls far short of addressing the crises we
face — their policies are vastly better than the increasingly racist
Republican Party as it offers extreme versions of free-marketism and
Christian fundamentalism. Claiming that there are no significant
differences between the two parties is a form of super-ideological
gaslighting on automatic pilot.

Abortion rights, judicial appointments, climate, environmental protection,
taxation, racial justice, voting rights, labor rights, LGBTQ rights,
misogyny and so many other basic matters are on the line. Yes, the
Democrats are often anemic on such issues. At the same time, the
Republicans are much worse. And their agenda now includes nothing less than

destroying electoral democracy

.

Republicans in office and even more extremist candidates seeking to join
them are blending in with political scenery they’ve created to normalize
gliding farther and farther rightward. They’re the electoral shock troops
of a party now fully engaged in what scholar Jason Stanley, in his book How Fascism Works, calls “fascist politics.” What seemed
dangerously outrageous not long ago can soon come to seem normal.

In Stanley’s words, “Normalization of fascist ideology, by definition,
would make charges of ‘fascism’ seem like an overreaction, even in
societies whose norms are transforming along these worrisome lines…. The
charge of fascism will always seem extreme; normalization means that the
goalposts for the legitimate use of ‘extreme’ terminology continually
move.”

Progressives have overarching responsibilities to oppose the corporate
power that ushers in oligarchy and also to oppose the far-right forces that
lead to tyranny. Focusing on just one of those responsibilities while
dodging the other just won’t do.

It’s accurate to say that the neoliberalism of the Democratic Party has
been creating and exacerbating conditions that fuel right-wing engines. But
at certain times — which definitely include the next two weeks, through
Election Day on Nov. 8 — electoral battles come to a decisive fork in the
road. We will be living with the consequences of this crossroads for the
rest of our lives.

_____________________________________

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the
executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author
of a dozen books including War Made Easy. His next book,

War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military
Machine

, will be published in Spring 2023 by The New Press.