Chauncey DeVega writing at Salon has an interview with Aleksandar Hemon, a Bosnian-born novelist and screenwriter. It’s worth noting that he’s Bosnian and not Yugoslavian because Yugoslavia did not survive the collapse of its government. Is the U.S. headed for a comparable break up? Hemon’s experience should be cautionary, especially now at a time when division in America is mixing with economic collapse, racial grievance, and a pandemic that puts normal expectations in limbo.
DeVega starts with a “sitrep” on the rolling chaos currently afflicting the nation, and then gets into an interview with Hemon who has seen where this can lead. A few excerpts:
In our recent conversation, Hemon warned that Donald Trump and the far right are engaged in revolutionary politics where compromise is not possible because they are preparing for armed conflict, while Joe Biden and the Democrats are only worried about the normative strategy and tactics of electoral democracy. Hemon also described Trump as leading a death cult organized around white supremacy and the related existential insecurities of the white men who are attracted to such politics. Like other death cults, Trump's supporters are willing to kill and die in his name, believing it will lead to personal rebirth and glory.
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One of the things that has challenged American exceptionalism is a pandemic that doesn't care anything about it, one that has revealed just how vulnerable we are when reality can’t be dismissed as inconvenient. (Although that seems to be Trump’s latest strategy.) Hemon notes that the virus has left some of us in paralysis while others have been empowered by the chaos.
People are struggling with the logistics of life, just staying on the surface and not drowning. Given the circumstances with the economy and the state of the world I would not blame anyone for that. But there has been this longstanding notion that America is a stable society. It is a country with its own deep tradition of checks and balances. In America, however deep the social injustice and inequality, the future was something that could be reasonably anticipated. Even if things were bad, there was a sense of continuity and predictability.
But what is happening now with COVID is that people in the United States simply do not know what is going to happen in a month. The future has become unpredictable. In America, people are now negotiating reality. Having to figure out reality and what is true or not on a basic level is a shocking change for many people in America and some other parts of the world. People are now thinking of the "future" in terms of months and not three or 10 or 30 years in the future. With this disruption in even being able to plan for the future, it takes agency away and gives it to other people and individuals. Someone else is now deciding your fate. Meanwhile, the people on the right have guns and think that they are some type of liberation force. They think they are the ones with the agency and freedom. Being on the left puts you in a position of not having agency in the United States at present.
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They may be wrong about a lot of things on the right, but one thing they are not, is in doubt about what they want or what they are willing to do to get it.
Note the striking absence of tear gas or rubber bullets or a line of police in body armor...
...Donald Trump and the right wing are in revolutionary mode, but there are so many observers who believe that they are just stupid and insane. These outsiders do not really understand what is happening. They dismiss what the right wing is doing as some type of farce or joke when it is deadly serious.
Revolutionary political parties do not need many supporters or members to succeed. Obsessing over how many people do or do not support Donald Trump is an error. Numbers are not the absolute measure of his strength. The true measure of Trump's strength is how many people are willing to die for him. How many people in America and Europe are willing to die for a leftist cause? Donald Trump has stormtroopers. We don't have stormtroopers. It is that simple. The Democrats are so afraid of anyone who even appears that they might just be a tiny bit radical. Even something like national health care is treated as too radical. The Democrats are not preparing for a fight; they're preparing for a vote. Those are not the same things. It is not enough. And it is probably useless in the long run, when the Democrats are up against a revolutionary right-wing movement.
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The GOP platform in a nutshell. They don’t even bother to hide it anymore.
The old joke about bringing a knife to a gun fight hasn’t been funny for a long time. Hemon’s warnings are being echoed by others; the situation is fluid. I am guessing the interview took place before the murder of George Floyd and the growing protests.
The outrage over the brutal murder of George Floyd by police has crystallized public dissatisfaction with everything Trump represents, and has gotten people out on the streets — here and around the world. As yet no one has been able to harness that energy as FDR did in the Great Depression. After decades of Republicans setting the agenda, Democrats have a chance to start swinging the pendulum back. While no one would mistake Joe Biden for a revolutionary, the revolutionary ideas are out there. If people like Warren, Sanders, and AOC can shape the agenda going forward, those people in the streets could regain the agency they’ve been denied.
Although Trump thrives on chaos, the chaos from the pandemic is not under his control either and it demonstrates his weakness in the face of it. As it takes off in red states and begins to hit his followers, his inability to protect them from it — the implicit bargain of a strong leader is to shield his followers from threats in exchange for their total loyalty — may begin to shake their devotion.
Again, that is chaos Trump does not control and his inability to control it threatens his grip on power. It’s why he is increasingly desperate. He’s losing control of his followers, the ones seeking to bring everything down at any cost. They are trying to bring about the violent revolution Trump promised them even if it tears the country apart. Especially if it tears the country apart.
America is not Yugoslavia — yet. Decades of authoritarian rule, control of every aspect of life, left that country ready to disintegrate when Strong Leader Tito died in 1980. Despite a determined effort by conservatives and the dark money behind them to rewrite history and control the narrative here, there are still plenty of Americans who remember it doesn’t have to be that way. Trump has not been able to solidify his control of the military — yet — and his increasingly visible impotence and broken promises are making him less attractive to the authoritarian followers looking for someone to strike down their enemies and lift them up.
But it would be a serious mistake to think “It can’t happen here.” What happens in the next few months is as dangerous for this country as anything leading up to the Civil War was. You’d think with all those statues being torn down at the moment we’d remember that America’s story has not been one of steady progress upward to the light. There has been blood, violence and sacrifice along the way. There will be more.
Read the whole thing at Salon from DeVega and Hemon.
What the pandemic and economic collapse has done in months is nothing compared to what climate change is going to do over the years ahead. We are running out of time to get our act together. Gazing at “The shining city on a hill”, we must not overlook the desperate slums in the valley below or leave anyone behind in the gathering storm. Political Cartoonist Brian Carroll has posted a sobering image of where Trump and those who support him would take us. Hemon is not wrong when he calls them a death cult.
Remember in November. Forward Momentum. Never give up, never surrender.