President Joe Biden has decided the best way to minimize Democratic losses in looming elections is to shift attention away from inflation, the border and crime to the "threat to democracy" posed by "semi-fascists" on the other side.
Incumbents who can't defend their records always try to make an election about their opponents, but Biden's ploy differs in two interesting respects. First, by using especially inflammatory language to describe those opponents; second, by the decision to depict not just Donald Trump and Republican officeholders who support him in such fashion but also, apparently, the 74 million Americans who preferred Trump at the ballot box last time out.
Amid all of Biden's fulminations, fist-shaking and shotgun slanders there is, however, a somewhat predictable lack of specifics.
Does the "threat to democracy" come from the Supreme Court returning the issue of abortion to democratically elected legislatures? Or maybe from Republican support for voter ID laws, which an overwhelming majority of voters also support? Perhaps from Republican opposition to Biden's embrace of racial preferences under the guise of "equity," which are likewise opposed by most Americans?
Going further, would strains of Republican fascism be found in their opposition to the lockdowns imposed in authoritarian fashion by Democrats during the pandemic? If not, perhaps in Republican resistance to Biden's Orwellian "Government Disinformation Board?" Or maybe criticism of Biden's use of likely illegal executive authority to excuse student loan debt and buy votes two months before an election?
Since Biden and his apologists almost certainly won't answer such questions, we might be forgiven for believing terms like "neo-fascism," at least when used so ambiguously, apply not just to MAGA Republicans (People who voted for Trump once? Or must it have been twice?) but anyone who criticizes in any way any of his administration's policies, thereby defining the fascist threat in such a capacious fashion as to encompass nearly all of us.
We are thus, given this sweeping indictment, left with the question of whether democracy can be saved from the fascists when the fascists are us, or whether it would even be, given the defining criterion of majority rule, a violation of "democracy" to attempt to do so.
Further confusion arises when considering the question of whether Biden or his ventriloquists have the faintest clue what fascism actually is, or whether they care that they are using the term even close to properly ("semi" in itself is something of a giveaway here, a thoroughly illogical formulation that should have been replaced, to better effect, by the prefix "neo").
"Fascism" is, of course, a term used by lots of people who don't have any idea what it means, and don't really care that they don't, because they are using it, like Biden, as a pejorative to discredit people who disagree with them. In Biden's case, it serves as a complement to "insurrectionist" and as a successor to "racist" (which was beginning to lose its utility due to similar elasticity of definition and expedient overuse).
There is also, the question of why, if MAGA Republicans pose such an existential threat to the republic, the national Democratic Party just spent more than $50 million nationwide supporting MAGA Republicans in Republican primaries (answer: because they know that they're not the threat Biden claims and easier to defeat in November).
Real fascism comes with the identification of political opposition as a "threat to democracy" and the equation of dissent with insurrection. All too often, those who most stridently link their opponents to fascism and depict themselves as combating it are the real fascists, using imaginary or exaggerated threats to silence critics, enforce conformity and consolidate power.
"Saving democracy" now requires, in Biden's formulation, "unity," in itself an eerie concept in a liberal society that cherishes freedom of expression and therefore protects expression of disagreement. But for Biden, unity is defined as acceptance of abortion on demand at taxpayer expense, ever-looser voting procedures, a ban on assault rifles, driving the oil companies out of business, allowing biological males to compete in our daughters' sports contests, and so on.
This has ceased to be a case of simple political disagreement on particular issues; a refusal to accept the entire Democratic agenda without critical assessment or questioning has become the defining criterion for "extremism," "insurrectionism" and now even "neo-fascism."
Political leaders who demonize their opponents are the real threats to democracy and the rule of law because the logic of "ends justify the means" is inherent in such demonization -- if your opponents truly are as threatening and despicable as you claim, then any means can be justified to defeat them, to the point where it becomes irresponsible to not use whatever at hand to save the republic (and the planet itself).
Only one side in American politics, consistent with fascist tactics, is trying to suppress the expression of opinion with which it disagrees, and it isn't the ("semi-fascist") Republican one.
Either Biden doesn't really believe the things he is saying, which would make him merely a demagogue seeking to sow division and instill fear for electoral gain, or he does believe it, which would be worse because it is compelling him to act upon that belief.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, Arkansas, received his doctorate in political science from the University of Illinois.