Presidential Election Lowers Expectations
Posted on October 21, 2016
Beating back a fascist victory is not a center-left victory. It is merely the absence of a terrible defeat. None of those fascist voters are going away. Instead they will holler about being stabbed in the back and they will organize greater atrocities wherever they have a state or local plurality. After the election is the time when the left most needs to organize–and probably won’t.
I use the term fascist in full awareness of the limits of that historic analogy. It is another failure of the left that we have not developed a more specific and agreed-on term for the authoritarian and anti-intellectual and bigoted and pro-violent American right.