Re: <nettime> Francine Prose: America feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover (TG)

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

The question, What is to be done *with these fascists* is definitely a good
one. It follows the question, How can Trump be removed? that Ted posed
about a year ago, asserting that *he will have to be removed*, which is
true beyond doubt. I have thought about that question a lot in the
intervening year.

Then there is also the question, What is to be done with ourselves, with
each one of us? Which may not be the least of the problems.

The liberals, no doubt Francine Prose among them, had to wait until white
middle-class people were gunned down to start getting serious about the
fascist takeover. So that was their limit. One could complain that Gaza
should have taught them that, that George Floyd's murder should have taught
them that, that Afghanistan or Vietnam or whatever grotesque American
imperialist war should have taught them that long ago. It's true, but since
we have to get on with the business of removing Trump from power, all these
complaints are not to be forgotten, but instead to be relativized. The
liberals are part of an evolving political spectrum, like the leftist
intellectuals and the anarchists, who *will have to admit that they
actually live in this country* (dixit Ted again).

On the basis of actions at the grassroots, mostly led by Latinos but picked
up increasingly widely, the Democrats have finally started to step up, as
individual representatives and to some degree as a party. For them too, the
country is "suddenly" on the brink of authoritarianism. Why did it take so
long? Small "d" democratic politics does not only happen in the voting
booth. It happens when molecular forces at the grassroots, and in the
institutions, and in the professions, all start relaying distinct demands
with a common sense of urgency. At moments of crisis these demands pierce
the usual capture of political representatives by interest groups. The
process is finally starting in the US. But it's a long way from removing
Trump from power (although probably a lot closer to removing ICE from
Minnesota).

What to do with the fascists is a harder question. There are a lot of
fascists now. My sense is that liberal denial of real problems allowed all
this to get much worse than it had to. I think that as Americans, most of
us participate in some way in that denial. Just like Europeans
participated, for convenience, in the processes that made the US into the
global hegemon. We evaded our responsibilities, in exchange for careers,
money, entertainment, or just the cheap and ever-available pleasures of
cynicism and nihilism.

Broken institutions are terrifying - because violence leaps into the
institutional void. But there are reasons why those institutions broke.
Their collapse can also represent a possibility, the possibility for
reconstruction (an urgent need that follows every civil war). There's a
steep learning curve ahead for anyone who wants to participate in removal
and rebuilding. First, because you have to get over denialism and take the
problems of *this country* seriously. Second, because you have to find a
way to deal with 40% of the Republican base, who *still* think Trump is
doing a great job.

More effort, citizens and non-citizens, if you don't want to live under a
dictatorship.

Brian

On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 11:27 AM GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Just a few minutes ago I wrote:
>
> 👉🏼 The same fools who enabled this catastrophe with their
> interminable arendtsplaining and pedantic denialism expect us to attend
> to their interminable babbling about how wrong they were. They should
> step aside and give their bully pulpits to people who were right when it
> mattered. 👈🏼
>
> These *postmature antifascists*, as I like to call them, are a dime a
> dozen and best ignored. Francine Prose is a reasonably distinguished
> person, deeply intelligent and clearly of good faith — she plays on
> our team, so to speak. But anyone who’d write *now* that the US
> “feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover”
> should be read with some skepticism, because the US is far past that
> brink.
>
> We’ve watched the prestigious institutions of one sector after another
> — national governments abroad and government entities at home,
> national and even transnational corporations, mighty universities, major
> media outlets, pillars of civil society, and on and on — quailing
> before Trump & Co. It’s perfectly understandable why they’d do so,
> and even a *rational choice*; I’m not one of those left-identified
> bombasts who naively believes the president of Harvard should risk the
> entire university’s existence for the fleeting glory of “speaking
> truth to power.” But even so, to spend the last year watching this
> happen and *then* argue the US is “on the brink”? WTF criteria would
> the country need for even the most prudent person to say we’ve gone
> over the brink?!
>
> Prose’s own words are “our country *is* on the brink,” but The
> Guardian’s editors changed that to “feels like” for their headline
> because out of journalistic caution. But that subtle shift, from fact to
> subjective impression, is in keeping with Prose’s own piece. It spends
> more time on the space cynical sysadmins used call PEBKAC, for Problem
> Exists Between Keyboard and Chair. If you read her essay, most of it‘s
> concerned with phones screens, snow, media, robins, etc — novelistic
> detail that puts us in the shoes, and chair, of a Serious Person.
>
> My comment above about pedantic denialists was prompted by a piece by
> Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic — “Yes, It’s Fascism,” with the
> subhead “Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now,
> the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.” He too spends
> much of his time maundering on about his subjective process, then he
> conjures up one of those ‘best practice’-style lists cribbed from a
> melange of Authorities on Authoritarianism — Snyder, Eco, Paxton, etc
> — of criteria needed for anointing something Officially Fascist. He
> introduces the list with a choice bit of rhetoric that doffs its hat to
> some sort of ‘methodology’ but ultimately affirms his own capricious
> authority: “Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries
> but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars
> together, the constellation plainly appears.” A decade too late, but
> who’s counting?
>
> Well, I am, actually. Not so much the exact number of years have passes
> since I argued that Trump would need be forcibly removed from the White
> House (ten), but more the qualitative sense of time that permeates
> people’s thinking and enables their passivity. When you say we’re
> *on the brink°, you’re saying it hasn’t “really” happened yet,
> which justifies passivity. Arguing it isn’t “really” fascism
> achieves the same effect by slightly different means, by focusing on
> discernment. Saying of something evil that “this is what _______ looks
> like” — fascism, authoritarianism, whatever, it doesn’t matter
> because it’s all just content for a mad lib — does it as well, but
> with a semiotic twist: it may or may not not actually *be* _____, but it
> “looks like” it. And, of course, protestation like “this isn’t
> who we are” and “we’re better than this” do the same, but in
> still other ways. The list of these rhetorical sleights of hand could go
> on and on.
>
> I have to make clear that the people saying these things should be
> assumed to be acting in good faith, caring for the public interest, and
> all those other warm-fuzzy things. I don’t mean to speak poorly of
> them as individuals. But as a *class* they’re pretty problematic,
> because the sum total of their efforts is to postpone the venerable
> question *what is to be done?* And in much the same way that they are,
> by their own admission, postmature antifascists, we should assume that,
> given the chance, they’d be among the first to prematurely declare
> victory over the fascists — because that’s when liberals would have
> to ask the much rougher question what is to be done *with these
> fascists?*
>
> Cheers,
> Ted
>
>
> On 26 Jan 2026, at 8:56, Patrice Riemens via nettime-l wrote:
>
> > Original to:
> >
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/25/america-feels-like-a-country-on-the-brink-of-an-authoritarian-takeover
> >
> >
> > America feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover
> > Francine Prose
> >
> > This is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
> > moment, everything else is a distraction
> >
> > Mon 26 Jan 2026
> >
> > When we talk about our inability to pay attention, to concentrate, we
> > often mean and blame our phones. It’s easy, it’s meant to be easy.
> > One flick of our index finger transports us from disaster to disaster,
> > from crisis to crisis, from maddening lie to maddening lie. Each new
> > unauthorized attack and threatened invasion grabs the headlines, until
> > something else takes its place, and meanwhile the government’s
> > attempts to terrorize and silence the people of our country continue.
> >
> > So let me break it down. There is one story: our country is on the
> > brink of an authoritarian takeover. In Minneapolis an innocent poet
> > and an ER nurse at a VA hospital were both killed in cold blood by
> > federal agents. It is happening now. Toddlers are being sent to
> > detention centers; videos of their gyms for kids recall the youth
> > choruses that the Nazis so proudly showed off at the Terezín
> > concentration camp. Intimidation and violence are being weaponized
> > against the citizens of Minneapolis, some of whom are afraid to leave
> > their houses for fear of being beaten, arrested and shackled,
> > regardless of whether they are US citizens or asylum seekers or people
> > from another country peacefully living and working here for decades.
> >
> > That is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
> > moment, everything else is a distraction. I’m glad to have been
> > informed about the heavy snow outside my window today and the local
> > weather-travel advisory, but frankly, it’s snowed here before – so
> > why is it leading the news?
> >
> > Donald Trump’s inability to tell Greenland from Iceland during his
> > speech at Davos is embarrassing, awful, sort of funny – but it’s
> > hardly the first time he’s made a mortifying mistake. I too want the
> > Epstein files released, I want to know who is guilty, I want justice
> > and respect for the survivors. But unless those revelations bring down
> > the perpetrators, it’s not – for the moment – the story.
> >
> > The story is what’s happening in Minneapolis. And even that requires
> > focus. Already the killing of Alex Pretti has partly diverted our
> > attention from the killing of Renee Good.
> >
> > The story – masked agents, arrests, violence, kidnappings,
> > deportations without due process – is happening all over the
> > country, but in smaller increments, without as much pushback, and so
> > far without the death of two innocent, middle-class, white bystanders.
> > The story is about how decent and unselfish Renee Good and Alex Pretti
> > were and about the falsehoods being told about them.
> >
> > The story is not letting ourselves be distracted from the real and
> > present threat to our democracy. That threat is the story which our
> > print, electronic and social media should be bannering at the top of
> > every feed and every front page, every day. To consistently run that
> > below the weather report is, quite frankly, to betray the struggles of
> > the people of Minneapolis.
> >
> > The story is what we do now to support our fellow Americans in the
> > midwest and to keep the violence and repression from spreading even
> > further into our own streets and backyards. The story is avoiding the
> > future that Stephen Miller and his minions are planning for us.
> >
> > The story is how we do it: not long after the 2017 inauguration of
> > Donald Trump, I wrote, in these pages, about our need to stage a
> > national strike. I know now that I underestimated the difficulties –
> > the amount of organization required, the need to strategize, the
> > necessity to support and provide for people who will lose their
> > livelihoods if they walk off the job. But many people are already
> > scared to go to work or send their kids to school.
> >
> > Such a shutdown would be an enormous undertaking, to say the least.
> > But it’s been done. Gandhi and Martin Luther King achieved at least
> > some of their goals without resorting to violence. The people of
> > Minneapolis have stopped business as usual in the city. That energy
> > can – and needs - to spread. Not to be alarmist, but unless we stay
> > focused, it may soon be too late.
> >
> > This morning I went off – I apologize! – on a college classmate
> > who sent an email link to a video of birds that others might want to
> > watch as “relief from the weather and the news”. I wasn’t saying
> > we should stop enjoying the birds. I’m thrilled that so many robins
> > elected to stick around this winter. I even like watching the crows
> > and turkey vultures pick the roadkill clean.
> >
> > But I don’t really want “a relief” from the loss of Renee Good
> > and Alex Pretti or from the resistance beginning in Minneapolis. To
> > crudely paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything. And
> > this may not be the time to distract ourselves with the latest scandal
> > or diplomatic blunder or with amusing images of the creatures who
> > don’t much care if the humans beneath the snow-covered rooftops are
> > living under a cruel and authoritarian regime.
> >
> > Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a
> > member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American
> > Academy of Arts and Sciences
> >
> >
> >
> >
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