A large section of the media focus on Trump as posing the central threat of fascism, but the drive toward a dictatorship in the country has proceeded rapidly in the last couple of years on Biden’s watch, and mostly at the state level, along with a growing resistance to it.
There are dozens of examples that could be listed, but here are a few:
The racist killings at the Dollar General store in Florida, and the violent attack on the Black security guard at a riverside boat dock in Montgomery, Alabama, both sparked resistance. In the Alabama attack, a 16-year-old Black youth heroically jumped in the water, swimming to help his co-worker; other Black workers and people on the dock stepped into the fight too. And in Florida, state legislators and community members called out Gov. Ron DeSantis for helping to create the atmosphere where racist killings can happen.
In Atlanta, efforts by activists to stop the planned Cop City urban warfare training center have been met with the police killing of an unarmed forest protector, brutality against others, and mass arrests and indictments on phony terrorism charges. But the resistance to Cop City has succeeded in making the facility a national issue, and organizing continues. Activists have gathered 116,000 signatures on a petition to put the issue on the November ballot in Atlanta, more than twice the number required. The city government continues trying to block the ballot measure.
In addition to Congress’ failure to pass a voting rights bill, since 2020 hundreds of bills have been introduced in state legislatures each year that would curtail voting rights, including at least 322 bills introduced in 45 states through June of this year. Dozens of these bills have passed since 2020. In 2023 through June, at least 14 states enacted 15 restrictive laws. (We’re reminded that last year Martin Luther King Jr.’s granddaughter said, “If you’re 9 years old or older and you look like me you will have fewer voting rights on your 18th birthday than what you were promised on the day you were born.”) But pro-democracy activists and legislators have mobilized to call attention to these vote suppression efforts, and from January through June 2023 at least 13 states enacted 19 laws making it easier to vote.
The political and physical attacks on the homeless are escalating rapidly, with city and state governments moving to break up homeless camps and overturn the few laws that protect the homeless, and proposing various plans to round the homeless up and force them into concentration-like camps, jails or mental hospitals. Politicians blame them for deteriorating conditions in the cities and whip up hysteria against them. But the homeless and supporters are fighting back, organizing, creating new camps, filing lawsuits, demanding housing and that their human rights be respected.
There is also the unconscionable assault on immigrants and the ongoing militarization of the border. The mistreatment of migrants and refugees includes their abuse in detention centers, the separation of families, the use of buoys, razor wire and 30-foot walls as deadly barriers, and southern governors bussing migrants to cities around the country as political stunts. The federal government has yet to provide support to the cities to help them assist the new waves of migrants. But resistance has grown also, with people going to the border and also stepping forward in cities around the country to welcome and assist migrants, and with people marching, bearing witness, and speaking out. The migrants themselves have put up a fight too, including with hunger strikes in the detention centers.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade gave rise to a raft of anti-woman legislation in a number of states, and prompted a huge wave of resistance across the country, along with pro-woman legislation in some states.
After a mass shooting at a school, the Tennessee Legislature responded to demands for gun control by using various tactics to silence progressive legislators, as well as parents and students who came to the state capitol to demonstrate for gun reform. But public pressure forced the governor to call a special session to deal with the issue. Even though the Republican-controlled legislature ended the session with no action on guns, those pushing for action built a powerful level of popular unity across party lines that will be significant going forward.
There are many other examples of the form the drive toward a corporate dictatorship is taking – the assault on the rights of the Indigenous peoples; the attacks on the LBGTQ+ community; the ongoing killings by police; the book bannings and the censoring of what can be taught in the schools and universities; the threats to crush the teachers’ unions; and state and federal court decisions that chip away at our constitutional rights. The list goes on.
These things are all expressions of the dismantling of democracy in a time when democracy is in the way of the profit making of corporations and billionaires. The focus gets put on who is or might be in the White House and on what Congress or the Supreme Court is doing, and those are all important, but the biggest battlefield against fascism is at the state and local level, where a whole infrastructure of fascism is being put in place, headed up by law enforcement and the courts. Fascism wins control of a country by first winning battles at the local level. Thankfully, the resistance to it also continues to grow. Let’s make sure the resistance grows even more. Everyone needs to stand up and step forward if we are to stop fascism from taking over our country.
This article is great in the way it pulls together all these disparate pieces and then puts the emphasis on what’s happening at the local level, which has become the leading edge of the fascism battle.
Great commentary and analysis. It’s important for people to realize it’s at the local level where some of the most important fights are taking place.