Chapter review: The Undrained Swamp Loves an Autocrat

The Undrained Swamp Loves an Autocrat is chapter 9 of Sarah Posner's 2020 book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. This chapter constitutes a long, detailed and frightening recitation of the influential people and tactics that America's fascist right used and still uses to advance the sacred fascist agenda. America's fascist right includes nearly all of the Republican Party. Dissent within the party has been mostly RINO hunted out. The FGOP (fascist GOP) leadership is now remarkably monolithic in (i) its ideological opposition to democracy and civil liberties for the unworthy and its support of autocracy, and (ii) its heavy reliance on deceit, lies and divisive emotional manipulation to appeal to base instincts of its rank and file followers and supporters. 

Due to its well-funded and constant propaganda, most of the rank and file (~95% ?) sincerely believe that they are defenders of democracy and civil liberties standing in staunch opposition to autocratic secular liberalism and its evil, degenerate moral values, especially rights for the hated LGBQT community and tolerance of alternate family structures, i.e., same-sex marriage. To the extent it ever was a real thing, the old Christian deflection from its core hate and intolerance, “hate the sin, love the sinner,” is replaced by “hate the sin and oppress the sinner into submission,” or something about like that. These powerful, mostly wealthy Christians are not messing around. They want power, wealth and social submission. They will crush democracy and install fascism to get it. They will lie, deceive, polarize and divide to get it.

Posner opens chapter 9 with this:

Despite his attempts to be seen as bringing fresh thinking to outdated foreign policy, his description of the European Union as a “foe” and NATO as an “obsolete” relic that should be discarded, are not harmless pronouncements of an outside, renegade president shaking up the wonks of the “deep state.” Nor is his affinity for Putin a consequence of simply his business ties to Russia, of his lust to see its hacked Hillary Clinton emails arrayed in public view. Trump means it. But he did not invent these changes. He is less a leader than a vehicle for a global assault on democratic institutions and human rights, assaults that began in Washington well before he became president, in the seamy world of unscrupulous political strategists and lobbyists --- the denizens of the swamp that Trump had disingenuously promised to drain. 

None of that is hyperbole or lies. The rest of chapter 9 provides evidence from the public record of what most of America’s radical right Christian leadership and radical autocratic conservative White power movement has been wanting for decades, at least since the 1950s. There are a lot of powerful, determined fascists in our midst. They are hell-bent on overthrowing democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law so they can install fascism with uncivil liberties and the rule of the tyrant and plutocrat. That is not an opinion, joke or misrepresentation. It is truth.

Arthur J. Finkelstein (AJF)

Posner writes about an influential Republican public relations (propaganda) expert and political strategist, AJF (1945-2107). This man was intelligent, data-driven and effective. He understood human cognitive biology and social behavior, both of which are prerequisites for expertise in modern public relations and political strategy. His professional experience included polling science, political strategy, messaging, media and ad placement, and campaign management advising. His favorite pejorative insult was “Clinton is a liberal.” His key advice to clients always was that a winning political message was one that would, in his words, “polarize the electorate.” 

A number of his proteges, called “Arthur’s kids,” wound up working with the ex-president’s 2015-2016 presidential campaign. One was the self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone. Stone is a felon, perjury and obstruction, who the ex-president pardoned. Another of Arthur’s kids, polling expert Tony Fabrizio, claims to have devised the critically important strategy of targeting and winning Wisconsin and Michigan, which was necessary for the ex-president’s electoral college win.

In addition to poisoning American politics, AJF sold his talents to fascist movements and leaders outside the US. He appears to have been instrumental in resurrecting the political fortunes of the fascist Viktor Orban and his fascist Fidesz Party. AJF helped engineer Orban’s election wins in 2004 and 2014, cementing his power in Hungary. Posner comments on how Orban used his power to attack democracy in Hungary:

When Fidez and Orban scored another resounding victory in the 2014 elections, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) --- another transnational democracy-promoting organization in the crosshairs of Europe’s far right nationalists --- charged that a number of factors provided undue advantage to Fidesz, including “the manner in which a large number of changes to the legal framework were passed, restrictive campaign regulations, biased media coverage, and the blurring of the separation between the ruling party and the state.” Barack Obama’s State Department, in its annual human rights report for Hungary for that year, made note of the OSCE criticism as well as “serious governmental and law enforcement actions against civil society organizations, continued curtailment of media pluralism, .... the systemic erosion of the rule of law, checks and balances, democratic institutions, and transparency, and of increased intimidation of independent societal voices.”

In undertaking a coordinated assault on democratic institutions that would become a model for other European autocrats, Orban was not only directly snubbing the EU, of which Hungary had only recently become a member. He was also sticking his finger in the eye of the established, bipartisan American foreign policy consensus.

That sounds an awful lot like current FGOP tactics and its anti-democratic political goals. The parallels are about as clear as parallels in politics can be. In essence, American fascists are exporting their expertise in establishing fascism to attack other democracies, democratic institutions and human rights throughout the world. This is not just a local political movement.

Another point about AJF is important to note. Posner writes: “The most important political point for an aspiring political strategist to remember, was that because ‘no one knows anything about anything,’ a consultant’s job was to tell people what they should know and ‘make it interesting.’” Posner goes on to cite a political attack ad that AJF dreamed up for an Albanian fascist politician insinuating that the fascist’s opponent knew nothing about Albania. The reaction from the attacked politician made everyone want to see the ad, which helped the fascist. 

Posner then draws the obvious parallel with US politics: “To see the impact of this same vapid political strategy in the United States, one need look no further than Trump’s Twitter feed, where he can dictate the course of a day’s news coverage with a false, misleading, racist, sexist, or simply insipid Tweet. Distracting people from what really does matter --- and steering them into thinking meaningless conflict is what matters --- is the point. Meanwhile, democracy is in tatters.” 

Other fascist groups and sleazeballs and their anti-democratic antics that Posner discusses include the pro-Putin Paul Manafort, the pro-Putin, pro-Orban, Republican representative Dana Rohrabacher, fascist mercenary lobbyists on K Street, including former congressman Connie Mack IV (worked for Orban), the ex-president, the fascist Jeff Sessions, the fascist idiot Devin Nunes, the fascist Heritage Foundation (a tax subsidized fascist organization pretending to be a pro-democracy think tank), the radical Christian nationalist and staunch democracy hater Mike Pompeo, White Supremacist and former Iowa republican representative Steve King, fascist former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and a slew of other fascist democracy haters and pro-autocracy groups.

The global war on democracy and human rights

One last thought. Posner discusses common beliefs among the fascists and autocrats in different countries as a possible common ground or glue to bring dictatorships and democracies together. One shared concern on the radical right is worry about families and the usual family structure. The hope is that by scaring the public into accepting and engaging in overt bigotry against same-sex and other non-traditional family structures, countries such as the US and Russia can be drawn together into a close alliance. To the extent they could, people like the ex-president, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo dismantled US efforts to defend democracy. When he was in charge of the State Department, Tillerson was as blunt about this as he could be. He told State Department employees that promoting human rights and democracy is an “obstacle” to advancing American interests. If that isn’t anti-democratic fascism, then what is it? The ex-president did his best to neuter the State Department in this regard, as Posner writes:

Midway through his presidency, Trump had yet to name a nominee for fifty senior posts within the State Department, nearly a third of the total political posts requiring Senate confirmation. Trump’s base of Christian right and nativist supporters not only doesn’t care --- it actively cheerleads the denigration of democracy and human rights, the rise of autocrats whipping up the grievances of right-wing populists, and distain for what America once was.  

All the bureaucratic and policy changes are driven not by Trump acting alone but by a profound rightward ideological shift within the Republican Party.

Questions: What do you think -- do we face a serious, imminent fascist threat in the US, or is that exaggerated to the point of being nonsense? Or, do you need more evidence to form an opinion? Is it reasonable to believe that no one knows anything about anything, leaving propagandists with a big pool of minds potentially at least partly open to what information the propaganda delivers, even if it is mostly or completely lies, immoral irrational emotional manipulation and/or crackpot motivated reasoning?