Jeremy Varon (#2: The Role of Civil Society)

(The New School NYC)

In America today, fascism is rising before our eyes. Consider the closing line of a judge’s order that the Trump administration restore due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Venezuelan man illegally sent to a torture prison in El Salvador. The 80-year-old judge, nominated by Ronald Reagan, proclaimed: It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.

That is a polite way to say that we are fast entering the twilight of democracy. Whether there is time depends, of course, on whether the Trump presidency accepts the rule of law. It also depends on whether civil society rallies to preserve both the rule of law and its own existence as bulwarks against tyranny.

Trump’s goal is maximalist: to use threats, bribes, theft, insults, mass firings, punitive budget cuts, and violence to turn all of American life — government, trade policy, the press, the law, museums, schools, sports, the arts, entertainment — into both the means and reflection of his despotic will to power. The assault on the university as a source of independent critical thinking has been especially severe. Receiving less attention is this outrage: that a 35-year-old lawyer with no historical training complained to Trump that she did not think exhibits at the esteemed Smithsonian museums were patriotic enough. Within days, he fired off an executive order railing against the museum’s alleged bias and tasked her with purging it of undue references to slavery and other historic blights. That is the MAGA makeover, which spares no institution or sphere of life from Trump’s control. It’s a top-down cultural revolution most Americans do not even want.

Each MAGA measure is met with a lawsuit, but the law cannot be counted on to rescue us. Public action, everyone agrees, is a crucial element. Here, there are some faintly positive signs. People are starting to hit the streets. More importantly, they are starting to organize, often across institutions and sectors, in public pushback to the MAGA assault. Weeks ago, something in me snapped, sparking my realization that I could spend the next four years in sorrow, fear, and trembling, or I could do something. I furiously began organizing for a cross-campus demonstration in New York City as part of a National Day of Action to defend higher education. It was a glorious crowd of 2,000 people. Academic workers, students, faculty, and attorneys came together in defense of free speech and academic freedom. Countless others are feeling called to action, around the issues that matter to them most.

I have no illusion about what civil society protests alone can accomplish. Resistance thus far has been relatively weak. I am finishing a book on protest of the Iraq War. During the Bush administration, vastly greater demonstrations took place on behalf of a country seven thousand miles away, that Americans would mostly never visit. Now, American democracy is under threat. We need still greater numbers and force to save our own country from attack by our own government.

The Iraq War did not end because the nation’s leaders realized the moral case against it was so powerful. It ended when the Bush administration’s military and political objectives collapsed in a maelstrom of chaos and death that it could no longer manage. Realistically, we are waiting for some major Trump administration error — policies so undeniably reckless and cruel — that they stir greater resistance and delegitimize the Trump presidency in the eyes of a critical mass of Americans. No one welcomes catastrophe. But it might take catastrophe for the tide to turn. When it does, we need to be ready: with organization, media, alliances, and messaging to make an overwhelming case for the preservation of democracy and a revival of public commitments to justice, freedom, equality, and love.

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