The Rise of MAGAuthoritarianism
Why America’s Crossing the Line into the Next Level of Fascism
by umair haque
It’s accelerating. In my head, I’ve begun to call it MAGAcore, or MAGAuthoritarianism. The next wave, and next level, of American fascism. You can see it now happening in plain sight.
Ironically? You and me? We’ve been painted as “alarmists” for years now. Can’t call it fascism! Nope, it’s not happening here. From the days of the New York Times giving glowing, friendly profiles to handsome neighborhood neo-Nazis to the almost surreal way that Washington DC won’t say the F-word. Not happening here.
But isn’t it? You don’t have to take it from us “alarmists” anymore. Take it from…someone as sober and establishment as…one of America’s, in fact the world’s, most famous corporations. Corporations — hardly bastions of social criticism.
It was left to Disney — filing a lawsuit against Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor — to call all it what it is. DeSantis has been after Disney, if you haven’t been following, because it’s firmly for rights for everyone, not taking them away. So he began to call it “Woke Disney” — because of course, hey, thinking it’s OK for other people to exist is “woke,” and that’s code for bad. Then he started in with more aggressive measures — like threatening to build a prison next door to it, appointing special oversight boards just for it.
Everyone should hear what Disney has to say, because it put the problem here precisely.
It put it even more sharply, summarizing it in perhaps the most accurate way anyone has so far:
That’s as accurate a definition of this new wave of American fascism as there could be — and it’s striking that it’s left to a corporation to say it well. To challenge it openly. A corporation — not, say a political party, intellectuals, establishment media, academia, and so on. Think of how badly that reflects on America, really — the picture it paints of broken institutions.
But this new wave of American fascism is hardly just about Disney. It’s coming for, well….
That was apparently a “breach of decorum” — the same offense the Justins committed for speaking out against…gun violence. See a pattern here? Not too hard to do.
Meanwhile, “there were more than 150 anti-transgender bills proposed in at least 25 state legislatures. By mid-April, there were more than 400 bills in at least 45 states.” Or try this on for size.
Now that I’ve given you a few examples, let’s discuss what’s going on here. It’s crucial for Americans to really grasp this well. Because right now, they’re frogs in the proverbial pot. It’s easy — too easy — to normalize all the above when it happens over and over again every day, and creeps forward one step at a time. People shrug and go back to their daily lives. Thus, the institution that’s most critical in any social collapse — the silent majority — is born.
We are going to split up understanding this new wave of American fascism into form and function. First, form.
The above are blitzkrieg tactics. Not on a battlefield, but in legislatures. Hundreds of bills? This fast? More bills than there are…trans kids…in a state? What sense does that even make? Clearly, the problem, if there even is one, is overblown here. But blitzkrieg tactics like this have a point. To overwhelm. To confuse. To dazzle. To demoralize. And most of all? To normalize. To create a kind of sense of futility in people, and make it seem like hey, maybe just ten attacks on people’s right to exist — or a corporation’s to enact those rights — just ten, phew, totally fine. Not fine.
I want you to see that really, really clearly. Think back just, say five years. Trump’s the one who initiated the GOP into blitzkrieg warfare. But his style was informational — not legislative, really. He’d attack groups in the media, over and over again, every single day, a dozen times a day, issuing screeds on Twitter, full of hate. The point, too, was the same — to dazzle, demoralize, to normalize, in this case, hate.
But this new wave of American fascism is different. The Trump years didn’t advance hundreds of bills a month to erase people’s rights. Things were slower, relatively placid, at least on the legislative front. The GOP’s learned. It’s blitzkrieg isn’t just informational now — it’s legislative, and that’s a quantum leap in American collapse, because while disinformation poisons minds — hey, those liberals drink kids’ blood!! They’re pedophiles!! Hillary leads a Satanic ring of them!! — legislation vaporizes rights. Disinformation normalizes hate. But legislation? Institutionalizes it.
So we are dealing here with a new level of toxicity, of dysfunction, of collapse. The acceleration of the institutionalization of hatred, ugliness, spite. The goal of every form of fascism and theocracy, really. Only now, the authoritarianism — the political enactment of it — has grown in sophistication, speed, and impact. Significantly so. Trump would advance a bill a year, maybe a handful. There was the “ethnic ban” (LOL, how fascist even is that), putting kids in cages, and so forth. Here we have literally hundreds.