Gwynne Dyer

Opinion | Why Republicans’ voter suppression efforts have all the hallmarks of fascism

As well as passing new laws targeting groups that tend to vote Democratic, Republican-run states are also going after the officials who run the election machinery and keep the system fair

If the Democrats do not stop these abuses, the Republican Party will be guaranteed to win the next presidential election

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Protesters opposing new voter legislation gather outside the House Chamber at the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas, on May 6. Texas Republicans have passed some of the most restrictive new voting laws in the US, finalising a sweeping bill that would eliminate drive-through voting, reduce polling hours and scale back Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls. Photo: AP

Gwynne Dyer

Published: 1:30am, 25 Jun 2021Updated: 3:16am, 25 Jun 2021

Godwin’s Law, coined by US author Mike Godwin in 1990, says that as a discussion on the internet grows longer, the likelihood of somebody being compared to Hitler or the Nazis rises inexorably towards 100 per cent. But, once in a very long while, the comparison is correct.

Patrick Cockburn is a well-known Irish journalist, currently writing a column in The Independent. Now that Bob Fisk is gone, he is the best foreign correspondent writing on the Middle East, but he has always covered other subjects with considerable insight as well. Last week, he broke the greatest taboo in English-language journalism.

Writing just after the Group of 7 summit, he warned that “the most dangerous threat [facing the world] is the transformation of the Republican Party in the US into a fascist movement”.

Almost every journalist alive has toyed with this analogy and then avoided it because it sounds like partisan rhetoric rather than hard analysis.

Cockburn points out that Donald Trump’s presidency had many of the attitudes and behaviours of a fascist regime – extreme nationalism, racist hatred of minorities, disregard of the law and constant denial of the truth – but that it failed one crucial test. It did not include automatic re-election, and so Trump lost control.

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Trump supporters storm US Capitol, interrupting Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory

As a result, Cockburn says, “two strategies, though never entirely absent from Republican behaviour in the past, have become far more central to their approach”.