"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." Albert Einstein
What scares me about as much as the new administration in the US is the way people around the world are reacting to it online. What with the threats to Greenland, Canada, and Panama, the plan to annex the Gaza Strip, and so much more, it's perfectly understandable. I'm reminded of the collective revulsion you could easily find all over the internet towards the Russian government three years ago.
That people are horrified by so much of what's going on is not the scary part -- there's so much to be horrified by. It's the way the debate seems to settle into a question of "appeasement" vs. "punishment" so quickly that I find the most disquieting.
There's no question that the debate will tend to become so binary when it's being carried out on our dominant platforms for communication in the world today. I don't know to what extent the atmosphere on social media determines policies anywhere, but to have a real discussion on social media reminds me of what Einstein said about the power of the atom so long ago. With this as the dominant means of communication on Earth today, humanity is even less prepared to change our modes of thinking. The same may of course be said about corporate and state media of all kinds, which has been true since long before the existence of Facebook.
The internet seems to be verily buzzing with an uneasy mix of sentiments. There are those who are somewhere between openly enthusiastic and guardedly optimistic about the shift towards the far right in the US, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, which many supporters of this shift do not characterize as far right. And there are those, more numerous in my circles, who are petrified by these developments, and the new dawn of 21st-century fascism that they presage.
Among this crowd that is freaking out about the rise of the far right, those who are trying to address the question of what is to be done are talking a lot about "appeasement" and "sanctions" as well as forming "united fronts." Many are the same folks who would have been calling for the sanctions on Russia three years ago, others are a whole new bunch.
Anyone can get it, of course, this is not hard. If a country invades another country or their leaders threaten to do so, this invites harsh responses of all kinds.
But at least as far as trying to come to terms with the new geopolitical realities we're all faced with now, if we try to ask not just what is ethical, but ask what are we actually hoping to accomplish with our response to the situation, then we may find that the best response is nowhere on the appeasement/punishment spectrum.
We could first take stock and ask ourselves, what does the rise of the far right in the US, Germany, Italy, India and other countries signify? Many things, to be sure. But history indicates that what the populist form of authoritarianism that we're faced with now feeds off of -- what gives it life and meaning -- is the failure or corruption of democratic rule, the inability of the people and systems espousing things like equality of opportunity and the welfare state to successfully make their case in the electoral arena, which often stems from the inability of bourgeois democracy, social democracy, social market economy, or whatever we're calling it, to meet the basic needs of the people in a given country.
The only effective response to the rise of the far right, at least according to my reading of how things have played out in the past, has been a society, government, or social movement that actually does a better job of running things in a way that meets the needs of the people than the alternative the far right is offering would seem to do.
Ineffective responses to the rise of the far right have included both appeasement and sanctions, along with both sectarian violence as well as what we might call "united front" thinking, in the way it tends to manifest in reality, dominated by business interests. It would have been best if all of these ideas, in the context of the rise of the far right in major countries, in particular, had vanished with the onset of the nuclear age, if not long before then, in my humble opinion.
One prominent and current example of a failed effort against authoritarianism has been the western world's sanctions on Russia. Regardless of whether you think Russia's invasion of Ukraine was provoked by NATO expansionism and would never have happened without it, or if you have a different view of the roots of the ongoing war in that region, and regardless of the motives of the Trump administration with regards to Russia and Ukraine, what have the sanctions on Russia accomplished?
The war goes on, with untold numbers of Russians and Ukrainians killed. Industries in countries that produce the same things that Russia produces, like in the US, have made record profits. Poorer countries in the world have been especially destabilized, with a rise in conflicts of all kinds, as well as a rise in poverty, hunger, and the occurrence of famines.
In Europe, drastically higher energy prices have also caused political destabilization and helped increase the popularity of the parties characterized as far right that are calling for peace negotiations.
In other words, sanctions on Russia have achieved worse than nothing, as many people would see it -- unless increasing profits in the energy sector and helping the rise of the far right in the west were the goals in the first place, in which case the sanctions are working very well.
I don't know what the big agenda of the Trump administration may be with concern to international relations, and I'm not particularly hopeful. But now, those who supported the sanctions on Russia are calling Trump, Vance, Hegseth, et al, "appeasers" for the current initiative towards ending the war there.
If we overlook the specifics and just assume that any peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that involves Ukraine losing territory or not being able to join NATO counts as "appeasement" of Russia, one main argument of those condemning the appeasers is that if appeased this way, Putin's next move will be to invade Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and perhaps Poland.
The logic in favor of this position, as far as I can tell, is that Putin equals Hitler, and this is what Hitler would have done. We should act now to contain Putin, the way countries should have acted when Hitler annexed Sudetenland.
There are a lot of problems with this argument, aside from Putin being a different person than Hitler.
The reality with NATO, here in the nuclear age, as well as Russia in the 21st century rather than Germany in the 20th, makes the entire situation completely different. The assumption that Russia is going to invade a NATO member country because it invaded Ukraine may be a good one if you're a military strategist coming up with possible scenarios to consider, but the idea that it's likely, let alone some kind of inevitability, as it is often portrayed, makes very little sense, in the age of Mutually Assured Destruction, which explicitly protects NATO countries, not non-NATO ones. And implicitly protects any country or alliance of countries with access to a massive nuclear arsenal.
But we have so many people online who are ready to shout "No Pasaran! No appeasing Putin!" And now, "No appeasing Trump!" It feels like many of them are following the dictats of a pamphlet which is derived from a playbook that most of them may not have read, but it's one based on events mostly of the pre-nuclear age that took place between the 1920's and the 1940's.
For anyone that knows about the tens of millions killed in the course of that period, from the late 1930's to the mid-1940's in so much of Europe and Asia in particular, things did not go well for humanity overall back then. We can sing songs about the incredible heroism of the struggle against fascism in its many forms, and we should -- but at the end of the war, the biggest victor was death itself.
To the extent that fascism was a global movement that was also popular in the United States, while it was increasing in popularity in so many countries and taking over some of them, with the New Deal defining life for so many millions of Americans for most of the 1930's, the popularity of fascism withered, as the popularity of socialism, and the approximation of some of its principles within the programs of the Roosevelt administration, soared. The nationwide programs that represented a viable way out of the Great Depression ended up making the idea of socialism much more popular on the American streets, farms, and forests than fascism was, along with other factors.
In the countries where fascism had taken hold, deflating the movement's popularity by creating a viable alternative model was no longer an avenue available to the opposition, and very difficult to impose from outside. The efforts that were made by other nations hoping to keep fascist powers at bay in one way or another, including appeasement and sanctions, failed spectacularly. In the end it was only after a war that took the lives of tens of millions of people that fascism in Germany, and the Japanese Empire, was brought to heel. And then over time the same "united front" orientation that ultimately defeated fascism in a broad coalition of nations is, in its state of servility to business interests and empire, giving rise to the new fascist movement.
We can dismiss the sanctions efforts of the US in the "Pacific Theater" in one sentence. When the US decided not only to stop trading with the Japanese Empire, but to try to impose a naval blockade and prevent Japan from importing oil from Indonesia, the Japanese response was the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
With concern to Germany, the persistent mythology surrounds policies towards that country during the period after Hitler came to power, while Germany's remilitarization took place, when the fascist bush might have been nipped in the bud. A question often asked is what if decisive military action were taken as soon as Germany broke the Treaty of Versailles with regards to developing its Air Force and Navy beyond the point stipulated in the agreement?
In theory it's a good question, but with the incredible bloodbath that was World War 1 still very much in the recent past, in the midst of the Great Depression, with fascism experiencing growing popularity in many countries outside of Germany, there was no stomach for that sort of action in the halls of power in Paris or London.
After that, efforts on the part of the Neville Chamberlain delegation to recognize Germany's annexation of parts of neighboring countries certainly didn't stop Hitler's next round of invasions, or the Nazis' concentration camp industrial slaughter operations.
If these efforts at appeasement had not been made, and the war between Germany and Britain had begun a little sooner than it did, would this have changed the course of history? There's no solid reason to believe this might be the case.
Prior to the failed policies of both appeasement and sanctions against the rising fascist powers of the day, in Germany the rise to power of the Nazis came hand in hand with an atmosphere on the German streets that was characterized by sectarian divisions and violence between fascists, communists, and social democrats. Communists were following received wisdom approved by Moscow, that the social democrats and the fascists were not to be tolerated.
This atmosphere of violence and intolerance is often celebrated, from the 1930's to the present, as the kind of militant resistance to fascism that was really exemplary -- the "Cable Street" attitude, as it might popularly be remembered in London, when local Jews and trade unionists and communists banned together and beat up the British fascists and drove them off the streets, repeating a scene that was at that time playing out on the streets of Germany regularly, but to deadlier effect.
Rather than preventing Hitler's rise to power, the widespread violence became an easy pretext to facilitate it. This tactic also failed.
Tactics of violence and exclusion on the streets, and international policies of both appeasement and sanctions, all have a proven record of failure.
Sectarian violence not only has a record of failing to achieve its goals, but of achieving their opposite, provoking the success of enemies rather than suppressing them, and getting people like Adolf Hitler elected to power, in that particularly notable historical instance.
Similarly, people in the area of Portland, Oregon and other cities will tell you that the atmosphere cultivated on the streets by elements of the anti-Trump "resistance" since his first term have largely served to increase, rather than decrease, Trump's popularity.
The best tactic history provides for us in terms of successful antifascism is setting the example for how a society can work that gives life meaning and allows people to prosper. The New Deal, with all its imperfections, succeeded in deflating the energy of a fascist movement in the US, whereas sectarian violence and appeasement in Europe, and sanctions on Japan, all just led to hardening lines and the wars between the nations that took the lives of tens of millions of people.
When I see all the comments from people on the left in Europe expressing horror at what's going on in the US, at Trump's incendiary statements and threats, or at Vance's strange speeches about new world orders, I see a lot of highfalutin talk about not appeasing Trump, and how the US is now Europe's enemy and there should be campaigns to sanction the US for its crimes.
It's cathartic talk rooted in a sense of what's right and wrong, and I understand completely. But presumably while we're boycotting the US, we should continue to boycott and sanction Russia for their wars of aggression, and perhaps China as well for their treatment of minorities, and when AfD wins in Germany, we boycott the biggest economy in the EU as well.
While the sentiment is all very understandable, emotionally, it's one with a very tragic history. Look at what sanctions on Russia have accomplished (or failed to accomplish). What would sanctions on the other major producer of oil, gas, wheat, corn, and fertilizer do to the hungry people of the world? How would such hostility be processed by the nationalist media machines? Would this help prevent or bring us closer to World War 3?
The talk about working up different policies for "red" vs. "blue" states in the US is also worrisome, in terms of what it communicates. The last thing we need is for it to become commonplace to assume that because someone lives in a given state or a given country, they believe in the rhetoric of their "elected" officials. As if somehow once there's a bona fide fascist in office somewhere, and they appear to have been democratically elected, we just assume that this is in fact the case, and now we overlook the totally corrupt nature of American auction-block democracy in order to vilify populations for their rightwing degeneracy.
We can't stamp out politically undesirable people from society through sectarian violence, and we can't go on pretending we can just impose sanctions on major countries that are integral to the global economy and then just ignore the devastating consequences, just because it suits the bravado of some, and the pocketbooks of others.
Saying "whatever you do, comply or resist, the consequences will be devastating," seems like especially unhelpful advice to people in a country that's been invaded, or colonized, or people who are living under authoritarian rule.
That being the case, I would still suggest that somehow what we really need to be doing a lot more of on this planet is setting the example for how to organize a society in a way that makes it the envy of the world because it's so egalitarian and prosperous. Providing this kind of beacon has a record of effectiveness. Sectarianism, sanctions, and appeasement all have a pretty solid record of failure. This is extremely frustrating for anyone who wants justice now, since setting a good example and being a beacon of egalitarianism is a long-term project, unlike shouting insults, starting trade wars, or launching missiles.
In my wildest fantasies of solidarity, people in countries not overtaken by some form of fascism would look at those living in the countries that have been overtaken with sympathy, as victims in need of assistance, and we might get a whole lot of outside agitators here among us to help us with this mess. But I know that's not very realistic, and also not nearly as satisfying as talk about fighting fire with fire. And more importantly, in most of the countries, outside of this one, where people are freaking out about the rise of Trump, that kind of fantastical solidarity would be hard to produce, because they, too, are facing a rising tide of the far right, once again echoing how it went before.
If we follow the same pattern we've followed before -- societies devastated by misrule and war give rise to a fascist leader who seeks to dominate the world, the world responds, tens of millions of people die and the whole thing ends with the first nuclear attacks on cities full of human beings ever -- then the next time we follow this playbook, the way it ends could be far worse. If there's another way forward, now would be a good time to find it.
