Toni Morrison has a short essay called “Racism and Fascism,” an excerpt from a speech she gave at Howard University in 1995. Here is the first part of it:
Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another. Something, perhaps, like this:
(1) Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.
(2) Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.
(3) Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.
(4) Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.
(5) Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy.
(6) Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.
(7) Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.
(8) Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy-especially its males and absolutely its children.
(9) Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions, a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press, a little pseudo-success, the illusion of power and influence, a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.
(10) Maintain, at all costs, silence. (Source)
How might this help us as we prepare for a second Trump presidency?
I see it as a helpful set of warnings – what we should be on guard against – but also a reminder.
It’s a reminder that European fascism and American institutionalized racism weren’t actually that different. In some ways, the “first solution” Morrison outlines – the creation of an internal enemy, which was demonized, criminalized, and studied in pseuodscientific ways, and then subjected to intense, spectacular group violence – that is as American as apple pie. This was lynching. This was the one-drop rule. This was Tulsa and Springfield, East St. Louis and Selma. So there's a precedent for this in America -- a distinctly American style of fascism with a quaint-sounding name ("Jim Crow").
But there are also warnings in Morrison’s list of new areas of focus; this is what we should be looking out for in a second Trump administration. Today, fascism need not look and sound like a man with a mustache screaming into a microphone in front of a massive crowd of brownshirted supporters. In the social media era, fascism can look like a racist meme on TikTok that people chuckle at on their phones while sitting on the toilet.
We know from the campaign who their favorites are: 1) racialized “illegal immigrants,” 2) queer and transgender folks.
Let’s look at this image again:
Notice that it’s not enough to simply say “there are illegal immigrants who commit crimes, and we should deal with that.” For Trump, it’s important to show the faces of the villains on stage -- to shame and vilify them. If he could have these men physically on stage with him to be jeered at by the rabid crowd, he would absolutely do that
Remember in the campaign the time he suggested rounding up undocumented immigrants and creating a "migrant fighter" league for UFC fights? That.
And of course, remember “They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs” from the debate in August? Fascist movements demonize minoritized communities by fixating on what they eat or don’t eat. They also invent vicious lies about those communities out of whole cloth and convince millions to believe in those lies.
As Morrison says in “Racism and Fascism,” “Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions…” I am sure the guy who made this YouTube video thought he was criticizing Trump. The millions who chuckled at the video on their phones? Not so much.The other villains of Trump's campaign were queer and transgender people. Something like 40% of all of Trump's TV advertisements in swing states were focused on an anti-trans campaign, with images like this one:
I'm sure we'll see more of this in the weeks to come: distorted images of queer and trans people put forward to elicit revulsion and disgust from mainstream viewers.
Finally, note Morrison's #10: "Maintain, at all costs, silence." Silence has already been the rule for Donald Trump's many enablers and apologists. There is nothing he could say or do that would lead his followers to criticize him or disown him. They are loudly silent. But that does not have to be true for the rest of us.