Francis Wilkinson
“We cannot let the bad guys win,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said Monday. DeWine announced that he was sending 36 state police officers to patrol schools in Springfield, Ohio, and protect, at long last, the town’s besieged residents.
Bad guys have been terrorizing Springfield. Dozens of bomb threats have been made against local schools and other public institutions since Donald Trump and JD Vance began a campaign of racist lies targeting the city’s Haitian immigrants.
DeWine, a Republican who treads gingerly around the fictions that animate his party, previously had called Trump’s lies “garbage.” But he was eager to attribute the bomb threats to foreign actors, which sounds both politically convenient and highly plausible. Trump, after all, has a passionate fan base in the troll farms of Russian intelligence agencies.
After Springfield leaders and other officials debunked the Republican ticket’s lies about Haitian immigrants devouring their neighbors’ pets, and pleaded for decency and reason, Trump and Vance countered with more lies. Their styles vary. Trump pretends to believe what he says. Vance says that he must “create stories” to serve the greater good of vilifying immigrants and getting himself elected. In any case, both are eager to keep the domestic terror campaign going.
Trump’s demagogy targets the innocent and unsettles the unbalanced, including men who seek to harm him. He cycles from baseless accusations about Haitians abducting pets to baseless accusations that his opponents are responsible for the violence that envelops him like the dust cloud trailing the Peanuts character “Pigpen.”
When bad guys are given rein to create chaos and inspire violence, and are even nominated to high office, other bad guys register the atmospheric change. At a recent Springfield town meeting, an avowed Nazi told city leaders, “I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in. And with it, public frustration and anger.”
Can you detect any difference between the Nazi’s rhetoric and standard Trump fare?
Nazis last month staged a swastika-laden march, accompanied by a rifle or two, through Springfield to terrorize Haitian residents. If they had replaced their swastikas with Trump flags would anyone have noticed?
In the eight decades since World War II, European and American politics have undergone remarkable change. But one constant remains absolute: If your political coalition includes Nazis, and your rhetoric sounds like Nazis, you’re not the good guys.
Democracy is easily compromised by intolerance because tolerance of intolerance is both a democratic feature and a bug. Karl Popper’s “paradox of tolerance” notes that too much tolerance of illiberal conduct will eventually enable the intolerant to prevail. Thus, tolerance will lead to its own demise, along with all the freedom and decency that flows from it.
We have been staring down the barrel of that gun for some time now.
American society is every bit as besieged as Springfield. MAGA’s pathologies may be calcified, but its hatred is dynamic. This week, we’re hating Haitians in Ohio. Last week, it was Venezuelans in Colorado. A few weeks before it was childless women with cats. It’s not a mystery where this stew of racism and misogyny, lies and hatred, leads: a destination that is functionally indistinguishable from fascism.
Few in MAGA’s ranks believe Trump’s absurd lies because they are believable. They simply prefer his lies to less flattering realities. The Springfield terror campaign is an almost perfect emulation of a Dixie lynch mob, refashioned for the age of social media. Demagogues spread a lie, and the mob responds. Before you know it, everyone is gathered around the tree in a festive mood.
Decent accommodation with the blood-soaked racism that ensued from slavery, as with the demagogy of George Wallace and other MAGA precursors, was never possible. It’s no longer possible to achieve it with MAGA and Trump. If Americans continue to tolerate the intolerance that drives MAGA, to appease the lies and hate and corruption that pervade Trump’s American grotesque, our tolerance will doom us. Governor DeWine is no Abe Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr., but the simple formula he espouses is the stuff of America’s greatest triumphs at home and abroad: We cannot let the bad guys win.
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.
