Capitulation: The Weimar Dems on Bended Knee

This article originally appeared on CounterPunch last Friday

Behold the craven post-election capitulation of the dismal Weimar Democrats to the Hitler-channeling fascist Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump. The imperialist butcher “Genocide Joe” Biden said this after Trump won two weeks ago:

“For over 200 years, America has carried on the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world — the people vote and choose their own leaders and they do it peacefully and where, in a democracy, the will of the people always prevails…something I hope we can do no matter who you voted for is see each other not as adversaries but as fellow Americans, bring down the temperature…The American experiment endures, and we’re going to be okay…we need to keep the faith… “

Right! This Vichy-like twaddle spewed from Biden’s mouth as the Republi-fascist party and its demented Dear Leader salivate over their coming “biggest mass deportation in American history,” their campaign to further unleash further an oil and gas drilling orgy that is turning the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber, and more terrible to contemplate (see below).

The rolling Trump-fascist coup has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. After a campaign in which he openly channeled Hitler more than once, Adolph Trump – accurately described by Noam Chomsky as “the most dangerous criminal in human history” nearly five years ago – will preside over a party and executive branch that is far more united and will be in far greater control of all three branches of the federal government than was the case in 2017. “Gilead “beckons: the coming new US government’s masters are determined to conduct a wide-ranging takeover and makeover of US government and society on Christian white nationalist grounds. And half or more of the nation’s powerful fifty state governments are already under Republi-Nazi domination.

Barring effective mass resistance (which must not be ruled and should be undertaken), we can expect significant movement on each of the following horrific policies from the coming new Amerikaner regime in its opening months: the draconian closing of the southern border; enlistment of the US military in a giant immigrant deportation program under the archaic authority of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act; the imposition of giant inflationary tariffs; the rollback of key environmental protections; the madcap approval of new gas and oil drilling, climate be damned; executive orders targeting transgender rights and “critical race theory;” the granting of pardons to hundreds of January 6 thugs; a draft national abortion ban.

Weimar-Vichy Joe wants Trump to see his political opponents as “fellow Americans” and “not as adversaries”? Did Biden not take a break from warmongering long enough to hear Donald “Retribution” Trump say that the Democrats are evil “communists,” that homegrown Marxists might have to be deported, that Trump wants to be a “dictator for a day,” that Trump wants to give cops carte blanche to conduct extrajudicial executions in inner city communities, and that the Insurrection Act should be declared to enable the US military to repress those who dare to protest the Trump regime? Did Joe not get briefed on the speeches where Trump promised holy retribution against his political foes and referred to them as “the enemy within,” the primary threat to the nation?

Kamala Harris: “We Will Help Him”

Not be outdone by her boss when it comes to bending the knee before the orang-brushed autocrat, Kamala Harris said this in her concession speech after this year’s fascist election:

“Earlier today, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power. A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time, in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God.”

So what if the Hitler-channeling brute she belatedly acknowledged to be a FASCIST with three weeks to go in the campaign triumphed in the third straight presidential election whose outcome he promised to honor only if he won? Never mind that Donald “They’re Eating the Pets” Trump mocked her racial identity and family of origin and essentially called her a lazy and stupid whore as well as a “communist” (a supposedly terrible thing to be – I disagree). Or that he is an openly eco-cidal white supremacist and women-hating authoritarian spearheading a movement for the Christian white nationalist transformation of the USA – a movement with a highly detailed and many-sided plan to lock in white supremacist, environmentally exterminist, nativist, and arch-patriarchal rule for the foreseeable future.

All that aside, Harris wants to “help with [the Trump team’s] transition” atop the world’s most lethal nation!

Nancy Pelosi: “Let’s Give this a Chance…It’s Going to be Pretty Exciting”

To further your sense of how pathetically Vichy-like the Dem capitulation is, read this ridiculous November 9 New York Times interview with Trump’s leading Congressional antagonist, former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – a woman who Trump liked to calls “crazy” and a “bitch.” Pelosi complains that Trump and his demented, woman-hating running mate JD Vance made light of a Trumpist’s lethal physical assault on her husband in the Pelosi’s home in the fall of 2022. Chanting “where’s Nancy,” a battle cry of the January 6 thugs, the fascist home invader cracked Paul Pelosi’s skull with a hammer – something that Trump and Vance joked about on the campaign trail!

Despite this and her observation that January 6 “was an insurrection instigated by the president of the United States,” Pelosi said this to the Times:

“The people have spoken, Donald Trump has won and now we will have a peaceful transfer of power in our country… I didn’t come here today to go through the list of grievances against Donald Trump. He’s now the president. We wish our country well under the leadership of any president… I’m not here to take him down. He won the election, congratulations, good luck to him there, but hopefully we can find common ground… I think that we make a very big mistake if we underestimate the greatness of the American people and the greatness of our democracy and the greatness of our country… We always try to work with Republicans…. He’s the president. We all want the president to succeed….Let’s give this a chance and see where we can find our common ground. We’ll see what is rhetoric and what is real. Let’s see what materializes…Let’s just move on….It’s going to be pretty exciting for what comes next in the Democratic Party.”

MSDNC Running Dogs: “A Disgusting Show of Obeisance in Advance”

And then there’s the “liberal” MSNBC Morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski giving new meaning to the old Maoist phrase “running dog lackeys” by making a cringeworthy jaunt down to the orange-hued beast’s Mar a Lago lair. As ABC News reports:

“It was the last thing you might expect if you watched MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ a month ago — hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski asking for a meeting and traveling to Mar-a-Lago to talk with President-elect Donald Trump…MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, fierce critics of President-elect Donald Trump, say they traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with him to reopen lines of communication that would better serve their morning show viewers…With feelings still raw two weeks after the election, their journey to Trump’s Florida home hasn’t gone over that well with many fans and critics of ‘Morning Joe.’ The show’s anchor team had been so critical of Trump that, in September, Scarborough said that ‘it’s not a reach’ to compare him to Hitler. MSNBC pulled ‘Morning Joe’ from the air the Monday after the assassination attempt on Trump this past summer…On Monday’s show, the hosts said they had reached out to Trump last Thursday and met with him the next day. ‘It was the first time we have seen him in seven years,’ Brzezinski said. She said Trump was ‘cheerful, upbeat’…On ‘The View’ Monday, co-host Sunny Hostin said…she didn’t think it was necessary to travel to Mar-a-Lago to ‘kiss the ring.’ …Jeff Jarvis, author of the BuzzMachine blog and a retired journalism professor at the City University of New York, said online that ‘it is a disgusting show of obeisance in advance.’…Several conservative commentators weren’t impressed either. Talk show host Buck Sexton, in a post on X, called the meeting astounding. ‘Trump’s victory is so complete, Morning Joe has fully surrendered,’ Sexton wrote. Veteran cable news personality Greta Van Susteren called it ‘groveling.’”

Hey Obama: Is it “the Apocalypse” Yet?

Biden and Harris’s ridiculous and conciliatory fascism-appeasing statements are not without presidential and vice-presidential precedent. Barack Obama told Tim Kaine in October of 2016 that the Hillary Clinton campaign had to “keep a fascist out of the White House.” Mrs. Clinton overheard the comment and noted her agreement.

The 44^th President of the United States had an accurate understanding of Trump as a malignant, authoritarian, and far-right existential menace to the republic – as “a fascist”! So did Hillary.

But so what? Less than a month later, with his vice president Biden (still irked that Obama and the Dems had given the nod to Hillary instead of him in the 2016 election) smiling wryly behind him Obama perversely said this to the American people after Trump defeated the Democrats’ dismal imperialist candidate:

“Now, everybody is sad when their side loses an election. But the day after, we have to remember that we’re actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage. We’re not Democrats first. We’re not Republicans first. We are Americans first. We’re patriots first. We all want what’s best for this country… we all go forward, with a presumption of good faith in our fellow citizens [that] is essential to a vibrant and functioning democracy…. I’m confident that this incredible journey that we’re on as Americans will go on…. I think of this job as being a relay runner — you take the baton, you run your best race, and hopefully, by the time you hand it off you’re a little further ahead, you’ve made a little progress…ultimately we’re all on the same team (emphasis added).

Then there were Obama’s statements to young, teary-eyed White House personnel and to The New Yorker’s editor David Remnick after Trump first won: “this is not the apocalypse…I don’t believe in the apocalyptic – until the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world.”

I think we know how the years after Obama’s presidency turned out – not exactly a shining monument to a “vibrant and functioning democracy” under leaders who “want what’s best for the county” out of “good faith in our fellow citizens”! In October of 2020, with two weeks left until the 2020 elections, I reflected back here on Obama’s November 2016 comments:

“The last three years and ten months have shown beyond the shadow of any serious doubt that Obama’s private assessment four years ago was correct. The Trump administration has been a proto-fascistic nightmare. After the child separations at the border, the concentration camps, the kids in cages, Charlottesville, the forced sterilizations of detained immigrants, the pardoning of racist war criminals, the El Paso slaughter, the Tree of Life massacre, Soleimani, calls for ]civil war’ and ‘tough guys’ [to step up], non-jokes about being ‘president for life,’ the insane genocidal-racist fanning of the coronavirus, ‘Free Michigan,’ the Khashoggi vivisection, the Dershowitz defense, Lafayette Square, Trump calling Black Lives Matter protesters ‘terrorists’ and hate-mongers, Portland, the ‘white power’ tweet, Kenosha, ‘Proud Boys Stand By,’ calling Kamala Harris a ‘communist,’ the presidentially sparked and approved fascist plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, the unfolding rolling coup that Trump and his personal attorney general are executing against the 2020 election, and so much more (the list goes on and on)…[After all that,] it’s absurd and embarrassing (shameful in fact) to deny the malignant proto-fascism of Trump and much of his base…Hey, Barry: with 220,000 plus dead from the Trump Virus; with the death count heading to half a million by next January; with tens of millions without jobs or health care; with a Christian fascist Handmaid jurist about to round out a 6-3 hard right Supreme Court; with long lines of masked and frightened people outside food pantries, testing sites, and polling places; with nuclear weapons and environmental regulations torn to shreds; with mass evictions on the horizon; with no new financial supports coming for people out of work; with even your neoliberal corporate Affordable Care Act on the chopping block; with little green Trump militia men gunning down civil rights protesters in the streets; and with a rolling coup being waged by the Trump administration on the nation’s highly flawed ‘electoral democracy’….hey, Obama, is it ‘the apocalypse’ yet? What do you say, 44? And isn’t it a bit late to ‘believe in the apocalyptic’ only when the apocalypse comes? Wouldn’t we try to make efforts to avert the apocalypse before it arrives?”

The fascist coup kept rolling on through the presidency of the dithering centrist and imperialist Biden – the mediocre corporate hack Obama rescued from “the enormous condescension of posterity” (EP Thompson) and who Obama did so much to catapult over the progressive Democrat Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary elections. Trumpsim-fascism marched on unimpeded by the blood-drenched Biden-Harris presidency, which made its own terrible contributions to “the apocalypse.” The Biden-Harris regime has helped bring the Doomsday Clock closer to Midnight than it’s ever been by sparking, funding, and equipping a savage, inflationary, and imperial proxy war in Ukraine, by funding, equipping, and protecting Zio-fascist genocide in Gaza, and by overseeing the drilling of more gas and oil inside the US than in any nation ever – this even as the climate catastrophe reached a potentially irreversible stage. Instead of locking up the top deranged insurrectionist Trump, the Biden administration kept him alive to run again. It was too busy killing people abroad (however indirectly) to “save democracy” at home.

“Dedicated with Fervor to Destroying the Prospects of Organized Life on Earth”

Here we are now with the nonfiction dystopian fascist nightmare depicted at the outset of this essay. How are the concessionary, running dog statements and actions of Biden, Harris, Nancy, and Joe and Mika et al. doing when it comes to trying (if this is the goal) to reign in the new Amerikaner Reich of Herr Trump, “the most dangerous criminal in human history”? Not so great! Look at the Malignant One’s Cabinet picks. They included an open white supremacist and woman-hating LGBT-basher to head the Department of Defense, a dog-killing white nationalist sociopath to head Homeland Security, an anti-vax conspiratorialist bear dumper to head Health and Human Services, and an openly ecocidal mass poisoning advocate to head the EPA. These and other Trump picks and moves are richly consistent with Chomsky’s judgement in January of 2020:

“Trump… is indeed the most dangerous criminal in human history (…my personal view). Hitler had been perhaps the leading candidate for this honor. His goal was to rid the German-run world of Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other ‘deviants,’ along with tens of millions of Slav ‘Untermenschen.’ But Hitler was not dedicated with fervor to destroying the prospects of organized human life on Earth in the not-distant future (along with millions of other species). Trump is…There is no need to review what is happening on Trump’s watch while he devotes every effort to accelerating the race to catastrophe, trailed by such lesser lights as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Australia’s Scott Morrison. …Every day brings new forebodings. We have just learned, for example, that the gigantic Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica has been eroding from warm water below. ..Trump’s war on organized life on Earth is only the barest beginning. More narrowly, in recent days, the Chosen One has issued executive orders ridding the country of the plague of regulations that protect children from mercury poisoning and preserve the country’s water supplies and lands, along with other impediments to further enrichment of Trump’s primary constituency, extreme wealth and corporate power. On the side, he has been casually proceeding to dismantle the last vestiges of the arms control regime that has provided some limited degree of security from terminal nuclear war, eliciting cheers from the military industry.”

There you have it my friends: the despicable President Elect before whom leading capitalist-imperialist Democrats are bending the knee, kissing his ring just weeks after rightly (if belatedly) calling him a fascist (!), has been reasonably described by one of the world’s greatest thinkers as “the most dangerous criminal in human history” – as worse than Hitler. Let that sink in.

On Giving Up

Surely this election and the frankly predictable capitulation of the dismal Weimar Dems to its horrific outcome and victors should be the last straw for decent US-Americans’ willingness to remain captive to the nation’s not-so leftmost major party when it comes to taking on the vile fascist country that lurks inside the so-called United States of America and will soon hold all the governmental reins The Dems will not and in fact cannot fight that country the way it needs to be fought. They are too wedded to the reigning power structures to play that role.

This does not at all mean surrender. Quite the opposite. It means finally saying no to the dismal Dems and saying yes to actual resistance and revolution.

In his post-election statement, Biden told Americans that “setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.” It depends. Giving up on social justice, environmental sanity, decency, beauty, science, and human emancipation from oppression and exploitation, giving up on a better world beyond class rule and more is, yes, unforgivable. Giving up on the Democrats, the US elections system, the capitalist system that provides the fertile soil in which Trumpism and other forms of fascism grow, is very, very forgivable. It is in fact highly recommended.

Let me finish on a more personal note. In personal and online communications with decent, non-fascist “fellow Americans,” I am picking up way too much passivity, listlessness, depression, detachment, and alienation and way too little righteous anger and determination to take down a fascist regime and the underlying system that gave rise to it. I guess the electoral Shock and Awe is going to be around a bit longer but really, friends, it’s already getting old. Look what these lethal assholes are doing! Are we really going to stand for this shit? Please remember: there is no such thing as a legitimate fascist government, no matter how it arises, and the Republi-fascists did not win their latest or previous victories through anything that deserves to be called “democracy.” No, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, and no, mainstream media, “the people have” NOT “spoken.” The fascist country spoke in an outsized voice. An oxymoronic “capitalist democracy” yoked to a Minority rule electoral and governance order rooted significantly in slavery has intolerably given birth to a new fascist regime that intends to literally kill off millions of us and cannot be allowed to stand.

Paul Street’s latest book is This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America (London: Routledge, 2022).