Extreme nationalism has eaten away at the myth of American Exceptionalism...
America has been steeled by the myth of our self-anointed “exceptionalism.” It is based on a conception of the bounty of our nation — its people, our melded culture, and the richness of our natural resources. Much of our success comes from the role immigration has played in creating a culture that is forever changing. The ties that bind us together are constantly being stretched to include those who come here for reasons some of us will never appreciate.
The current political attack from those on the right on immigrants at the borders is both shortsighted and self-defeating. Republicans see the problem of a broken immigration policy as an instrument to divide us while ignoring a solution because it would deny them an opportunity to exploit the issue for political gain. “Haitians eating pets” is a headline that while untrue is helpful in frightening those voters susceptible to conspiratorial misinformation that can then be applied to all immigrants.
As the child of an immigrant, I can remember the hardships my father’s family endured for the sake of becoming an American citizen. They arrived with little expectations for themselves. Their aspirations were for opportunities that would be available for the next generation. Their time here would include hard work, low wages, and hope. By definition, immigrants are mostly contributors and hardly ever “takers” as they plan for their progeny the advantages they would never see for themselves.
As our nation sits on the brink of falling into a fascist state, opportunity becomes the first victim as the underclasses become scapegoats. The poor and disadvantaged many of who are immigrants are blamed for societal ills about which the rich and powerful pretend to be obsessed.
In “Anatomy of Fascism,” a 2004 book by Robert O. Paxton, the author defined fascism by its core obsessions:
[fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
MAGA is the current iteration of a fascist movement that has been with us from the beginning of time. For those who wonder about the origins of our national decline into fascism, there is ample evidence that it didn’t begin with one person or party. It is not something new in America. The seeds of fascism have existed within the framework of our founding document. They are refined in our national expressions of nationalism and American exceptionalism, which were put into practice soon after its signing. The most obvious example is the rationalization of slavery as an economic necessity for planters, mirrored in the North by a similar rationalization that devalued the lives of laborers and institutionalized child labor for the benefit of the ruling class. The 19th-century concept of Manifest Destiny was a reimagined validation of colonial imperialism practiced by European powers in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Here is Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd president writing privately to William Henry Harrison our 9th as early as February 1803 discussing an early framework for manifest destiny based our “exceptionalism”:
...but this letter being unofficial, & private, I may with safety give you a more extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians, that you may the better comprehend the parts dealt out to you in detail through the official channel, and observing the system of which they make a part, conduct yourself in unison with it in cases where you are obliged to act without instruction. our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them, by every thing just & liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against wrongs from our own people. the decrease of game rendering their subsistence by hunting insufficient, we wish to draw them to agriculture, to spinning & weaving. the latter branches they take up with great readiness, because they fall to the women, who gain by quitting the labours of the field for those which are exercised within doors. when they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will percieve how useless to them are their extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessaries for their farms & families. to promote this disposition to exchange lands which they have to spare & we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare & they want, we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good & influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop th[em off] by a cession of lands. at our trading houses too we mean to sell so low as merely to repay us cost and charges so as neither to lessen or enlarge our capital…
[T]hey will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the US. or remove beyond the Missisipi. the former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves. but in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. as to their fear, we presume that our strength & their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, & that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. should any tribe be fool-hardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe & driving them across the Missisipi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.
— National Archives, “From Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, 27 February 1803”
Jefferson’s vision of unvarnished nationalism based upon either ‘the termination of their history or “the seizing of the whole country of that tribe” is precisely what then occurred in the West. Mingled with his thoughts on expansionism, which Jefferson asked Harrison not to share, was the issue he had a hand in putting off for the future, slavery. By 1860, the issue of the westward expansion of slavery and the refusal of the Republican president to avoid s compromising the rights of blacks for a measure of peace. Lincoln’s presidency was the first executive attempt at rectifying Constitutionally protected slavery using an executive order that was followed after his death by the ratification of the 13th Amendment which officially abolished slavery in December 1865.
The MAGA movement began with a similar false premise. In an attempt to negate Barack Obama’s legitimacy as a presidential candidate, Trump began an unprecedented attack on his origins. The birther “movement” was the alpha phase of MAGA’s creation of a separate class of enemies identified as “ other.” Birtherism morphed into the right wing’s desire to dehumanize and thus marginalize larger groups they found unworthy of their coalition of undereducated and wealthy voters. The Democratic concept of “loyal opposition” became defunct in right-wing politics as Republicans decided that their only path to national power lay in their ability to recast issues as grievances.
The progression of grievances played out in Trump’s three campaigns for president is a textbook example of Paxton’s definition. Birtherism, immigration policy, political enemies, and attacks on democratic institutions describe the victimhood that requires retribution. His success follows the path of earlier fascists and is validated by its proponents in part by the letter that Jefferson wrote in strict confidence to his friend within a few years of the implementation of the Constitution. Two centuries later, a related nationalistic argument involving race and legitimacy was being publicly debated in our politics. Its adherents believe their movement’s allure lies in original thought. Instead, it began in the survivalist brain of cavemen whose world was inevitably divided into “them” and “us.”
When the existence of a loyal opposition is rejected, the political playing field narrows, as it did in 1860, to one side demanding untenable compromise, and the other unwilling to compromise principle for peace. In an article written about Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff regarding his defense of the need for political tempering, the author quotes Ignatieff:
"The opposition performs an adversarial function critical to democracy itself," Mr. Ignatieff observed. "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law...
Treating politics as a war against enemies is a mortal threat to democracy because it corrodes compromise...
If your opponent is an enemy, however, then compromise is not an option. Victory or defeat are the only possible outcomes.”
— The Globe and Mail, “Michael Ignatieff's timely warning on the politics of fascism,” by John Ibbitson (2012)
The concepts of “loyalty” and “opposition” in a democracy are integral and not antithetical as we are now experiencing. Denying its fascist roots is a ploy to entice willing compliance and deniability among those caught up in its intoxicating mix of grievance and reform.
The logical end of such a movement is to betray loyalty and eliminate opposition. The real tragedy is not that it is now just happening to us. The tragedy is that it tears at our own belief in our exceptionalism, an affectation damned with faint praise. At its best, it suggests that our greatness lies in our diversity and our ability to redefine and expand freedom.
At worst, American Exceptionalism is essentially trite and unoriginal. Our experience is that it is only true when it is not rooted in malignant nationalism:
Over the last two centuries, prominent Americans have described the United States as an "empire of liberty," a "shining city on a hill," the "last best hope of Earth," the "leader of the free world," and the "indispensable nation." These enduring tropes explain why all presidential candidates feel compelled to offer ritualistic paeans to America's greatness…
"[I]t was no different from "British exceptionalism," "Greek exceptionalism," or any other country's brand of patriotic chest-thumping.
— Walt, Stephen. "The Myth of American Exceptionalism." Foreign Policy, November 10, 2011.