One of the counter-arguments I've gotten on my authoritarianism piece is that whatever the truth of Trump's power and presidency, the *rhetoric* of claiming that he is consolidating authoritarianism, of claiming that he is a fascist or proto-fascist, is super-helpful as a mobilizing tactic. I've been thinking about this argument a lot, and I appreciate the folks who've been pushing me on it. I think this article—on how DACA and immigration politics are playing out in the budget negotiations—shows why it's less persuasive than it might seem.
Right now, there are some very high-stakes negotiations going on between Congress and Trump, between the Dems and the GOP, within wings of the Dems and within wings of the GOP. It involves a nesting of issues: immigration, spending in general, military spending in particular, and a potential government shutdown. By any measure of the last decade or so, all of this is normal politics: the GOP has repeatedly scuttled immigration reform; there have been repeated shutdowns or near-shutdowns; and getting a budget passed has been extraordinarily difficult in the last however many years. Nothing we're seeing here is new, at least not since the Tea Party. Even Trump's bomb-throwing "shythole"—which led to a breakdown of negotiations over a possible immigration compromise—makes perfect sense in the context of the GOP's repeated acts of last-minute sabotage, over the years, of any possible immigration bill.
There is also a tremendous leverage the Democrats have right now. Not absolute power but leverage. The GOP is super-divided right now: One sector wants absolutely no compromise on immigration; another sector wants no increase in spending; another sector wants a major increase in military spending; and a good many of them are itching for a shutdown. They're like Lady Lazarus: one in every ten (more like one in every three), they manage it. Then you have the saner parts of the leadership that wants to avoid a shutdown at all costs, and they're contending with Trump who doesn't know what he wants and whose only concern about a shutdown is that he keeps his three TVs on. What the Republican leadership (sans Trump) knows above all else is that if they're going to avoid a shutdown, they need Democratic votes. They can't corral their own party to act in a disciplined fashion on this nexus of issues. (Which in itself is totally fascinating and very revealing of the state of the GOP.)
The Democrats are also divided, though. How they play this one requires as much unity as possible. Immigrant rights groups and organizations have been playing this very smart, pressing harder and harder on the Democratic leadership not to accept any bad compromises (it may turn out that "shythole" saved the Dems from signing on to what may have been a shytty compromise). And the Democratic leadership increasingly seems confident that if there is a shutdown, the blame will fall on the GOP, not on them. So it is possible that they may be able to use all of this to extract maximum concessions from the GOP. *Possible*, not definite or even probable. Possible.
That's where we come in: in helping to push the possible to probable to definite. Whether and how this all works out is any one's guess. Activists and organizers and on-the-ground movements are working hard as hell, but they're getting very little attention—from what I can see—on social media and in the media more generally.
Now, if you see this as part of the process of normal politics, you'd see the potential leverage, the way in which boring policy talk of budgets and spending are very much caught up with and in the politics of immigration and the fate of the undocumented. Some reporters and commentators—Sarah Jaffe is one—are very very good at making these connections.
If, however, you see Trump—and particularly the whole politics of immigration around Trump—entirely through the lens of fascism and authoritarianism, you tend to completely gloss over the boring and very institutional—and, yes, normal politics—dimensions of his entire story. Particularly on the issue of immigration, which has come to be, in social media discussions, a kind of synecdoche for Trump's fascism.
This is why, I'm quite confident, I see almost no one posting or commenting on social media about any of these negotiations in Washington. I see almost no one posting or commenting on social media (particularly no one who is convinced of Trump's fascism or authoritarianism) about how we can leverage or exercise power in these negotiations and discussions, how we can do everything we can to support the immigrant activists who are doing an amazing job of holding the Democrats to task on this.
Instead, what I do see from people who are sure of Trump's authoritarianism or fascism, is the invocation of immigrants as a moralistic trump card: as quite a few people said to me over the last three days, "Your Trump is not Hitler argument is small comfort to the 200,000 Salvadorans." Well, from what I can see, your Trump is Hitler argument isn't doing much for those Salvadorans either. (This, by the way, is the poor cousin of the "If you're saying Trump is not Hitler, you're saying everything is alive and well." After I posted about that comment, which was from a random troll, I saw one fairly sophisticated academic after another claiming exactly that: That somehow I was saying everything is fine. Oy. There's not a map of misreading big enough—or, more properly, small enough—to cover that one.)
Okay, sorry for that last note of pique. My main point is really to respond to those folks who are seriously engaging with these arguments and who have said that they think the Trump authoritarianism line is rhetorically and politically useful as a mobilizing device. Again, judging by the way this immigration issue is playing out on social media, I don't think that's the case.
If Trump survives long enough to begin some form of "police reform" expect this guy to be his "African-American."
