Democrats might point to MAGA world’s opposition to illegal immigration and its invocation of American nationalism as having fascist roots. Really? Nationalism was Woodrow Wilson’s core principle at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. He argued that each nation deserved its own state, an argument that is at the heart of the Russian-Ukrainian war. If nationalism per se is fascist, then the modern order based on nation-states is also fascist. That is patently ridiculous.
Nor is an insistence on immigration controls inherently fascist. If immigration control is fascist, then the center-left leaders of many successful democracies are also fascist. That’s absurd. Denmark’s Social Democrats won the last election in that country after they embraced a strong immigration policy that some on the left have criticized as prejudicial toward Muslims. Canada has strict controls on immigration, prioritizing the educated and the wealthy over others. Australia turns away asylum seekers who arrive by boat, sending them offshore to have their claims processed rather than let them roam free, as Biden has done here.
Even the attempt to keep Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6 — a refusal “to accept the will of the people” is the principal objection Biden appears to be leveling at MAGA Republicans — does not justify Biden’s use of the inflammatory label “semi-fascism.” Yes, attacks on elections are heinous and autocratic but they aren’t necessarily fascist.
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