Driving us backwards: The Federalist’s wet dream of a neo-fascist America

When the Federalist teased its essay “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives” on Twitter on Thursday, some people, including myself, joked that the new word they were looking for was probably “fascists.” This turns out to be not much of a joke, as the essay, by Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson, preaches a revanchist authoritarianism that in many ways resembles classical fascism.

Davidson’s argument for abandoning conservatism is a fairly simple one: It has failed. “After all,” he writes,

what have conservatives succeeded in conserving? In just my lifetime, they have lost much: marriage as it has been understood for thousands of years, the First Amendment, any semblance of control over our borders, a fundamental distinction between men and women, and, especially of late, the basic rule of law … [Y]ou cannot preserve or defend something that is dead.

What does he want to put in its place? Something that takes us backward, culturally and politically, perhaps hundreds of years. Conservatives should start calling thinking of themselves not as conservatives or even Republicans but as “start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries.” Davidson’s “restorationists” could probably be better described as “revanchists,” as they not only want to restore lost territory but also to “retaliate” against those who have torn apart the glorious world he imagines we once had.

It’s an explicitly authoritarian vision. The word “democracy” never once appears in the essay, and references to the concept only refer to events in the past. Instead, Davidson speaks bluntly about “seiz[ing] power” and the possibility that his revanchist forces won’t ever “relinquish” this power once the government is in their hands. (This is a question, he suggests, that he and his allies should only “attend to … after we have won the war.”)

Once in power, the revanchists should forget all about the (alleged) conservative idea of “small government” and instead learn to love Big (Brother) Government, inserting it deeply into private life.

Put bluntly, if conservatives want to save the country they are going to have to rebuild and in a sense re-found it, and that means getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it. … The government will have to become … an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

Davidson likes the word “blunt,” and his thinking is blunt indeed. He wants to use the government’s

antitrust powers to break up the largest Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve them of public funds. To stop the disintegration of the family might require reversing the travesty of no-fault divorce, combined with generous subsidies for families with small children.

But he’s just getting started. He envisions a moralist police state with “a dramatic expansion of the criminal code.”

He wants to outlaw abortion on a national basis, with no exceptions for anything; he equates abortion with “premeditated murder.”

And then, of course, there are the drag queens.

Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; [and] parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse.

In Idaho, Republicans are already trying to ban not just Drag Queen Story Hour but all drag performances in public.

As for what he calls the “transgender question” more broadly, Davidson declares

that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.

The right wing defines “sexually explicit” quite expansively. As I noted earlier this week, the 33 Republicans who have introduced a federal “Don’t Say Gay, Don’t Say Trans” bill to the House have defined

“sexually oriented” material so broadly that it includes not just things like “lascivious dancing” and racy books but also “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects.”

Banning teachers from talking about these topics would be a first step towards effectively banning gay and trans people from public life.

All this is authoritarian, clearly, but is it specifically fascist? One way to look at the issue is by referring to Umberto Eco’s famous essay on “ur fascism,” setting forth 14 characteristics of a generic fascist regime. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to go through all 14, but let’s look at some key ways in which Davidson’s vision resembles the fascist one.

As Eco points out, fascists embrace a “cult of tradition.” So does Davidson, with his talk of “restoration” and the faded glories of “western civilization.” At one point, he cites the “iron-willed and audacious” (as well as thoroughly theocratic) Pilgrims as appropriate role models for his revanchists. Welcome to the brave new world of 1620!

Under fascism, Eco notes, “there can be no advancement of learning.” Davidson wants to starve the university to wipe out new ways of thinking.

Eco continues, noting that “[t]raditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.” Davidson repudiates many of the trappings of modernity, from no-fault divorce to gay marriage.

Fascism, in Eco’s formulation, is also about the “cult of action for action’s sake. … thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes [and there is] [d]istrust of the intellectuals.” See Davidson’s paean to sweeping arrests of drag queens — and his hatred of the modern university.

Eco further explains that fascism

seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.

Davidson wrings his hands over so-called open borders and spends much of his essay railing against “outsiders” like gay and trans people.

Ur-Fascism, Eco says, “derives from individual or social frustration.” Davidson’s essay is suffused with frustration and angst over the modern world.

Ur-fascism is nationalistic; Davidson’s hysterical remarks about our allegedly uncontrolled borders suggest his feelings on this point.

Ur-Fascism is conspiracy-minded; “at the root of [its] psychology there is the obsession with a plot.” Davidson sees himself and others like him in a struggle against an “ascendant left [that] wants to dismantle our constitutional system and transform America into a woke dystopia.” In reality, the “left” is hardly ascendant, and insofar as it is a coherent entity it is not plotting to destroy constitutional government or institute any kind of dystopia.

Eco continues:

For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle … life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world.

Davidson’s essay is filled with talk of struggle, of war; he envisions some kind of “final battle” after which his side seizes power that it may never give up.

Skipping a few of Eco’s less critical points, we arrive at this one:

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

Davidson hails the “populist wave” that put Trump in power. But his was a strange populism indeed, as he was elected after losing the popular vote and has never held the allegiance of a majority of Americans. Eco continues:

For Ur-Fascism … the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. … Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium.

Or, for that matter, Trump’s rallies.

There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

This future — Eco was writing in 1995 — is now, and Davidson’s essay is filled with this sort of “emotional populism,” in which his feelings about things — from abortion to drag queens — override the actual majority views of Americans. There is no logical, fact-based argument that could possibly justify treating parents who take their kids to a family-friendly drag queen story hour as child abusers; Davidson’s animosity towards the harmless events is wholly based on emotions (felt by him and others on the right) which he thinks should override the fundamental rights of others to speak and act freely. That is “selective populism” at its worst.

Davidson, in short, ticks off most of the boxes in Eco’s 14-point list of fascist characteristics.

It’s alarming, to say the least, to see how openly so many on the right are openly embracing key aspects of fascism — from Tucker Carlson’s espousal of “great replacement” theory, to Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking at a white nationalist event, to the literal attempts of Trump and his army of fanatics to override the election and seize power on Jan 6th. The Federalist has joined this crowd, going all-in on a particularly American version of fascism. We need to fight all this as the danger it is.

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