GUEST OP-ED: Challenges for Progressives — Historian Trevor Fisher Details Why Unity on Both Sides of the Atlantic is Key to Defeating Trumpism
Historian Trevor Fisher’s guest op-ed on why an alliance of UK and US progressives is vital in this moment.
***Please take out a membership to support the light of truth.***
I first was introduced to Trevor Fisher, when he reached out to Byline Supplement’s team about a report I had written on how we break the GOP’s death grip.
From that time in January, I have had a fascinating correspondence with him, and I shared with him the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) report on authoritarianism’s global rise, and he shared with me a brilliant essay he wrote for The Orwell Society, in which he asks the very important question: is the future Orwellian?
The two greatest lessons I learned from our correspondence are these: that Biden is being forced to fight too many fronts, which in my investigative reporting reveals this fact benefits Putin, whose fingerprints are often at the scenes of global crimes against humanity.
In addition, he wrote me these simple words:
“The only way to reverse the trend is to defeat the biggest problem we have, which is MAGA, then Putin.”
—Trevor Fisher, historian
Those simple words haunted me, and in our last correspondence, I asked him to write on op-ed for Bette Dangerous on this topic, and I am very grateful he obliged.
GUEST OP-ED:
Challenges for Progressives — Historian Trevor Fisher Details Why Unity on Both Sides of the Atlantic is Key to Defeating Trumpism
It was in March, the Washington Post reported that 71% of the world’s population live in autocracies, up from 48% a decade ago. Democratic regimes have slipped from covering half the world’s people to less than 30%. There is no reason to think this downward trend can be easily reversed, and in two traditional heartlands of democracy — the USA and UK, which have elections this year — challenges are mounting.
The USA sees the greatest challenges, and if Trump retakes the White House his MAGA movement (Make America Great Again) and its close relation, QAnon, will be powerfully boosted. QAnon — a belief that democracy is a fraud controlled by the ‘Deep State’ — has essentially merged with MAGA, and its development of an “all weather” philosophy adapting to immediate headlines is increasingly important.
The reaction of the extremist Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene to the shooting of the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in May is a case in point. Greene claimed that the assassination attempt was provoked by a speech he had made opposing the Covid vaccine, a major obsession of the far right.
Greene implied the crime was part of a wider conspiracy, arguing on X/Twitter his speech was “great and courageous – no wonder they shot him”. Current evidence indicates the shooting was an individual act and a conspiracy is yet to be demonstrated. However for QAnon believers what they oppose is always the result of a secret collective, cunningly concealed. The QAnon-MAGA merger represents an enormous threat, with MAGA a distinct political movement now controlling the grassroots of the Republican party through the Trump Cult of Personality.
Make America Great Again asserts that America is no longer a Great Power, a message allowing a coalition of forces within the Republican party uncritical of the Great Leader to develop. In the Republican primaries Trump steamrolled his opponents while Congressional republicans even if not overtly Trumpian have had difficulty in backing policies not approved by Trump. This extends to areas where far from improving US position in the world, undermines its standing. The most damaging was the six month stand off in approving military aid to Ukraine, despite MAGA republicans not having a majority of Republican representatives in Congress. Ultimately the Republicans did vote through aid in the House using Democrat support.
However, the delay helped Putin to prepare a massive Spring offensive, which puts Ukraine at grave risk. How cutting off arms supplies mid-war helps to “Make America Great Again” is unfathomable, but is not the only area where MAGA helps Russian Imperialism.
The NATO Issue
The nature of MAGA will become increasingly pointed as the elections come nearer with Trump and his followers’ hostility to NATO rising up the agenda. Trump has made his opposition to the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance plain, putting himself in the same political area as Putin. No other American politician since the Labour and American governments devised the Alliance to hold back Soviet — ie Russian — expansionism in 1949 has lined up with politicians in Moscow, yet Trump has made threats to refuse to support NATO allies if attacked by Russia, and that he will not support Ukraine. Ukraine is not a NATO member, but refusing to back countries threatened by Russia is not a position any US president from Truman onward would support. In what ways does this Make America Great Again?
I would hazard a guess that most MAGA adherents could neither define nor explain what NATO is, but they’ve been conditioned to have a negative reaction to the acronym in the inverted upside-down world they’ve been conditioned to reside in. It is also ominous that most Americans do not have passports and little knowledge of the world outside the US.
Trump is playing to American war weariness and reaction to US foreign policy failures, notably the disastrous Bush invasion of Afghanistan. While it is true that Trump is hostile to China, the Chinese are key backers of Putin’s Russia, thus successes for Putin must embolden the Chinese leadership. Biden will oppose Chinese imperialism notably over Taiwan. Would Trump?
Trump’s position on NATO does not yet dominate the Republican party, though the MAGA faction within the party sets most of its agendas. However, in regards to NATO, Republicans in Congress before Christmas passed a bi-partisan bill stipulating any revision of the NATO commitment would have to be made by Congress. It could not exclusively be a Presidential decision. Nevertheless as Head of the Armed forces Trump would have considerable leeway, and only with a Democrat in the White House would the Russians be deterred from attacking NATO countries, clearly threatened by Putin’s imperialist agenda.
The Russians want to destroy NATO. How does facilitating this Make America Great?
MAGA and QAnon – Weakening America?
What cannot be disputed is that MAGA and QAnon have no connection with traditional Republican politics from the Civil War to the Bush family and for all the problems the Republican Party have provided over the years, this is the major problem. There is no element of constitutionalism in the MAGA faction, and the attack on the Capitol showed both a hostility to the non-violent politics of America since the Civil War and a contempt for truth in the belief that the election had been won by Trump. In cult dynamics, this is referred to as disassociation. The MAGA-QAnon adherents are no longer living in a fact-based world.
Indeed, Trump did not win a majority vote in either the 2016 or 2020 election.
That the Constitution relies on a pre-democracy relic, the Electoral College, shows a lack of majoritarian politics, which is now haunting America. Constitutionalism has to be defended. The existing written Constitution – notably the power of the Supreme Court to operate as a partisan body appointed by an extremist president to operate on the extremes of one party – cannot be defended even if in the past it may have benefited Democrats and Democracy.
The constitutional and practical defences against autocracy will need strengthening, as the MAGA phenomenon and its analogue QAnon demonstrate, the US is dangerously close to falling into the hands of Trump. His concern for truth, the rule of law, and other constitutional political principles held as fundamental to progressive politics, are non- existent.
America is close to joining the trend flagged up by the Washington Post in March. All those who reject dictatorship and the abuse of power face critical choices in the next few months. It is vital that there must be a unity of progressives on both sides of the Atlantic.
Elements of the British Conservative Party are already embracing Trump and his politics. Their opponents must become proactive on both sides of the Atlantic. The only way to defend democracy is firstly to defeat MAGA, and then to combat the outreach of Putin, which has been underestimated. Achieving success must involve new cross-Atlantic alliances. Nothing less will do.—Trevor Fisher
****
Trevor Fisher is a historian and published author who studied at the universities of Warwick, Birmingham and Keele. At Warwick he was taught by E P Thompson, at Birmingham by Stuart Hall, and at Keele by Tim Brighouse. He is a member of the British Labour Party and was from 2009-14 editor of the journal of the Socialist Educational Association. Currently, he writes about education for the Case Notes of the British Campaign for State Education and was the first Secretary of the Labour Reform Group. His area of historical expertise is British 1558 - 1660 from Elizabeth I to the Restoration of Charles II. In addition to launching an upcoming Substack, he is writing a book about Francis Walsingham and Mary Queen of Scots. Trapped by Walsingham, he had her put on trial and executed.
****
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you to everyone helping subsidize my summer “workation” travels by doing the following:
Share my reporting with allies
Buying my ebooks — here’s a promo code: Birthday-Special
Also, a private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous/gmail. 🥹
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
🤍
Begin each day with a grateful heart.
🤍
