Professor Brian Klaas observed the following:
This is precisely what Yale Professor Timothy Snyder calls “governing by crisis and spectacle.”
The purpose of a fascist government is to maintain order, which means keeping the ruling oligarchs rich and everyone else poor. This raises a problem for fascist leaders. How do they keep their constituents happy as they rob from them and keep them poor? (Things like give tax cuts to the rich and eliminate health care for all?)
They do it by creating a show. They do battle with enemies. (Snyder quotes fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin who, at the time of Hitler, laid out a blueprint for how fascism might take hold in Russia. Putin studied Ilyin, and of course, Trump imitated Putin.)
Made-up enemies are safest. The next best are powerless enemies. That’s why Trump picked homeless migrants as enemies. That way the ruling oligarchs don’t get hurt and their property doesn’t get damaged. It’s also why Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
If you are a fact-based leader, it defies common sense for Texas (of all places) to blame its power shortage on the Green New Deal. If you are a crisis-and-spectacle leader, it makes perfect sense to blame the current crisis on those evil Democrats.
When I was in the South I saw billboards that said something like, “Dear Government: Stop helping me. I can’t afford it.” Those unhinged from facts are good at propaganda because, well, they’re unhinged from facts.
Texas Governor Rick Perry provides a perfect example:
This Texas mayor resigned after putting into words the entire Republican philosophy of governing:
Yes, no kidding. Until yesterday, this Tim Boyd guy was really the mayor of Colorado City, Texas. He expressed the Republican governing philosophy, which embraces what historian Heather Cox Richardson calls the cowboy myth: The self-reliant man doesn’t need government help.
Dupe people into embracing oligarchy by flattering them.
For more about the Cowboy myth, see this post.
