Rising Fascism in America by Anthony R. DiMaggio

Rising Fascism in America by Anthony R. DiMaggio

Author:Anthony R. DiMaggio [DiMaggio, Anthony R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032056203
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-12-31T00:00:00+00:00


Anti-Intellectualism, Social Darwinism, and Pandemo-Fascism

The rise of anti-intellectualism makes individuals susceptible to extremist views that, while not based in solid evidence, are accepted because people defer to a charismatic leader. In Trump’s America, militant anti-intellectualism fueled Social Darwinian notions that the president, not medical experts, was best suited to address the Covid-19 health crisis, and that Americans should disregard medical recommendations for social distancing, mask wearing, and against premature state reopenings. Trump supporters fell into a fanatical pandemo-fascistic discourse that celebrated, or at least tolerated, a survival of the fittest “herd immunity” mentality and fueled a militant commitment to Covid-19 death cult politics.

Donald Trump acknowledged the fanaticism of his base when he claimed during the 2016 election season that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and he “wouldn’t lose any voters.”123 This cult of personality was apparent via the admission of nearly two-thirds of Trump’s supporters that there was nothing the president could do that would cause them to question their support for him.124 When Trump talked about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, he may as well have been talking about not losing voters despite his culpability in the deaths of hundreds of thousands (by early 2021) by downplaying the worst pandemic in a century. As Trump acknowledged, although he claimed that he recognized the gravity of Covid-19, he marginalized the significance of the threat because he did not “want to create a panic.”125 Taking Trump at his word, we can conclude that in playing down the dangers, he fueled mass deaths by compelling his supporters to believe that Covid-19 was exaggerated and overblown. The counter-factual that fewer deaths would have resulted from Americans taking Covid-19 more seriously is reinforced by medical research, which estimated that 40 percent of the nearly 500,000 deaths that occurred by early 2021 were avoidable, if Americans had followed medical experts’ guidelines on social distancing, mask wearing, school reopenings, and ensured adequate public access to PPE and testing in response to Covid-19, as other countries did.126

As discussed in Chapter 2, the effort to undermine expertise and professional knowledge was long-standing in rightwing media prior to Trump’s rise to power. This anti-intellectualism continued under Trump. In attacking American schools and universities, Trump lamented the “radical left indoctrination, not education” from “too many universities and school systems,” announcing his Department of Treasury would be reviewing the tax-exempt status and federal funding of American universities, which he threatened would “be taken away” if the “propaganda” continued.127 He promised to “stop radical indoctrination of our students and restore PATRIOTIC EDUCATION to our schools” via the establishment of “the 1776 commission,” which was tasked with developing a “pro-American curriculum” for schools to follow, contrary to the “twisted web of lies in our schools and our classrooms” that was allegedly embraced by “critical race theory” and “the 1619 project,” which were “a form of child abuse.” Education, Trump demanded, must be driven by efforts to “teach our children to love our country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag.



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