In The Nation

JD Vance brought all of that pathological hatred of Haitians to bear when he accused Haitian immigrants, whom he considers a threat, of eating cats (the same cats he also considers a threat to white birth rates). The racists who participate in the anti-immigrant online mobs do the same. Not everybody who is piling on is aware of the deep and disgusting history of racism toward Haitians: After all, many online MAGAs have an aversion to knowing things about the other peoples of the world. But they know enough (that Haitians are Black and vulnerable in this country) to derive glee from participating in cruelty.

It hurts, of course. It always hurts when you are reminded of just how many white folks hate your people. It always stings to see a few other Black people or other supposed allies join in the denigration. I think the insult that Haitians are eating pets is doubled for me because I know for a fact that white Americans care more about their family pets than they do about Haitian immigrants being threatened and harassed right now. If all of Haiti were a nature preserve for cats and dogs, it would be protected at all costs. Since it is a home for free Black folks, its people are treated like dogs.

But being hurt and being defeated are two different things. White folks have been trying to strangle Haiti and Haitians into submission for over 200 years, and yet we are still here. What I can laugh about is this: The white supremacist forces multicultural America is trying to defeat in this election are forces little ol’ Haitians defeated literal centuries ago. America is still trying to get at our level.

What we can see from this example of Nazi Germany, and from studying other instances of fascist movements around the world, is that there are five major themes of fascist education:

1. National greatness
2. National purity
3. National innocence
4. Strict gender roles
5. Vilification of the left

These themes are essentially different ways that fascist movements stoke grievances among the dominant group they serve in order to further their aims. In the process, they are careful to eliminate any contradiction of their narrative. This would include, for example, any scholarly research revealing flaws in national myths, any form of education that clearly reveals national guilt, any suggestion that diversity and plurality might be beneficial to society, or that more equitable gender relations might be beneficial, or that the political left is significantly less of a threat than they imagine.

This centrist Democratic strategy fits into a larger, longer-term, bipartisan alliance that views protesters as the enemy, and their tactics as a threat to the fundamental interests of our militarized, fossil-fuel-dependent society.

The repressive bipartisan playbook is partly rooted in the 2001 Patriot Act, rushed through and passed overwhelmingly on the wave of fear following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The law led to increased racial profiling, sweeps of millions of private phone records, and a vast expansion of the government’s ability to spy on ordinary citizens. Simultaneously, decommissioned military hardware from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan flowed to local police and sheriff’s departments, allowing them to deploy bayonets, riot shields, grenade launchers, sound cannons, sniper scopes, detonator robots, and tank-like Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected trucks known as MRAPs. (Some of this equipment was restricted under President Obama, then allowed again under Trump.) Hence local police and sheriff’s offices, moving in military-like formation in places like Ferguson (after the police killing of Michael Brown), Minneapolis (after the murder of George Floyd), and the Standing Rock Sioux reservation during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, confronted unarmed citizens as if they were Middle East insurgents. In other words, like the enemy.

The House of Representatives seemed to achieve its summit of cynical grandstanding today, with debate over a resolution proclaiming that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. That measure is not only a kind of photographic negative of the 1975 UN resolution condemning Zionism as racism (revoked in 2019); it also is founded on the antisemitic equation of Zionist sentiment with Jewish identity, even though many Orthodox Jews, and secular dissenters, remain opposed to Zionism. New York Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler raised that crucial objection, among others, in an impassioned dissent to the resolution, but as Nadler spoke on Monday night, the measure was on track to be endorsed in a lopsided majority vote—not least because its language leaves ample room for anyone voting “no” to be branded an antisemite. Sure enough, the resolution passed by a resounding 311-14 margin, with 92 representatives voting “present.”

Johnson is a perfect avatar for this project of marrying Christian nationalism with Trumpism. He’s soft-spoken in ways that hide his extremism. He’s a folksy fanatic—as Nelson notes: “Even some LGBTQ activists have acknowledged his winning ways, as he undermines their very right to exist. After the prolonged, acrimonious process of selecting a Speaker, his humorous, aw-shucks manner may have come as a relief to his weary colleagues.”

But make no mistake: He is among the most extreme Republicans around. Speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox, Johnson described himself as “a Bible-believing Christian” and said that if you want to understand his politics, “pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”

In a 2003 article, Johnson wrote an editorial declaring, “States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe [forbid] same-sex deviate sexual intercourse…. Proscriptions against sodomy have deep roots in religion, politics, and law.” He has described abortion as “a Holocaust.”