Polman: The F-word is finally and rightly ubiquitous

Let’s talk about the F-word. 

No, the other F-word. 

Not the one uttered 269 times in Reservoir Dogs and 569 times in The Wolf of Wall Street. 

I’m talking about the one that should be on everyone’s lips - because it so concisely describes our current hellhole, and because clear-eyed people with impeccable creds recognize that it’s long past time to mince words. Especially this particular word, the one I’ve italicized in this recent wise remark from David French, a veteran conservative attorney and evangelical Christian:

“We’re living in a version of the dual state. Not to the same extent as the Nazis, of course, but (the) Nazis didn’t create their totalitarian state immediately. Instead, they were able to lull much of the population to sleep just by keeping their lives relatively normal…They went to work, paid their taxes, entered into contracts and did all the things you normally do in a functioning nation. But if you crossed the government, then you passed into a different state entirely, where you would feel the full weight of fascist power regardless of the rule of law.”

That’s where we are, folks. That’s why the F-word is now seriously (albeit belatedly) in circulation. Commentator Jennifer Rubin, who rose to prominence as a staunch conservative voice, is urging Americans to “mount even greater assaults on the Trump fascist enterprise.” Jonathan Rauch, the veteran political observer, had long refused to invoke the word - until now: “When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it.”

It’s about time.

As someone who first used the word five years ago (Trump’s violent coup quest at the Capitol was “textbook fascism”); and as someone who has F-worded ever since (Trump in ‘22 was “a fascist in exile”) (America in ‘24 was “sleepwalking toward fascism”) - I was feeling kinda lonely. I kept asking myself how we could ever muster the will to confront the coming storm, to fight this existential threat to our democracy, if purblind people couldn’t see what was looming in front of their eyes.

Well, better late than never, I suppose. Read the polls. The blatantly obvious has finally become impossible to deny or ignore. The summary execution of U.S. citizens by lawless paramilitary goons, the mass surveillance (via facial recognition and other tech wizardry) of protesters and dissenters, the MAGA seizure of ballots in a Democratic Georgia stronghold (a dress rehearsal for MAGA assaults on the ‘26 midterm tallies), the federal arrest of two independent journalists…It’s all happening, the fascists in power are turning the screws, and nobody is safe.

The big question is what we do about it.

I’ll get to that. But first I need to lament the missed opportunity of 2024, when we could’ve shut the fascists down via the ballot box. Some prominent ex-Trump employees openly used the F-word, yet still people didn’t listen. Or perhaps, thanks to our fractured media climate, they never heard the warnings. Mark Milley, who served Trump as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in ‘24 that Trump was “fascist to the core.” So did John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff: “Looking at the definition of fascism - it’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So, certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”

It was all for naught, for many reasons:

* Because we’re so polarized, it’s near impossible to sway anyone’s mind. When I used the F-word in a column two years ago, a reader in Aurora, Colorado wrote that “as a Marxist, Polman thinks anyone opposing his political ideology is a fascist, so pretty much any assertion he makes in that regard can be summarily dismissed.” 

*  When millions of Americans hear the F-word, they associate it with swastikas in grainy black and white on the History Channel — something remote in time and foreign by definition.

* Over the years, the F-word has been invoked with such abandon that for many it has been leached of all meaning. Back in my college days, during the last phase of the Vietnam war, cops were routinely (and idiotically) derided as “fascist pigs.” George W. Bush was stupidly denounced as a fascist. Heck, even Kevin Costner devalued the word in Bull Durham when he went to the mound and told Tim Robbins that “Strikeouts are boring. They’re fascist.”

* We’re a very naive people. Timothy Snyder, a top expert on fascism, explained this two years ago: “We lack the experience of the collapse of the republic. And now we are confronted with people in power who wish to bring it down…As soon as the collapse of the German republic in 1933 is evoked, American voices commence a fake lament - America is uniquely good, so nothing about Nazis can ever apply, and/or Hitler was uniquely evil and so nothing concerning him is relevant.”

Granted, many of the 77 million voters who re-hired the fascist did so because they were concerned about illegal immigration and sincerely believed that he would mass-deport the people who lacked the proper paperwork. But it required only minimal cognition to recognize that he would enforce his mandate in a fascistic manner. 

All the evidence was obvious, to anyone paying attention, that he wouldn’t confine himself to illegals and proven criminals; that his longtime fetishization of violence (urging fans to “knock the crap” out of protestors; hoping that cops would “shoot them in the legs“) would become policy; that his lawlessness (pardoning the Jan. 6 criminals who were convicted in courts of law) would become policy; that his fascistic smearing of entire ethnic groups (dehumanizing them as “garbage” and “animals”) would become policy. 

I have to assume that some of those 77 million balloters are now saying, “Gee, I didn’t vote for this!” But, tempting as it may be to denounce them, the better choice in this dire time of crisis is to welcome them. The mission to salvage American democracy must be bipartisan; to excuse the cliche, it’s all hands on deck. And there are reasons to be encouraged. Minnesotans have shown what feet on the street can do. Even Congress is resisting his quest to make ICE his primary instrument of terror. Various election-monitoring groups (donations welcome) intend to foil his plot to rig the midterms - and voters are already pushing back, as evidenced by what happened this weekend in a Texas state Senate election. Back in ‘22, voters in that reliably red district had elected a Republican by a landslide margin of 20 points. In ‘24 voters there had favored Trump by 17 points. But in this weekend’s special election, the Democratic state Senate candidate decimated his Trump-endorsed opponent by 14 points. In an upscale suburban district.

Translation: Unlike Adolf Hitler, who speedily destroyed German democracy in 1933 with barely a ripple of public dissent, Trump’s fascism is broadly unpopular, more so with each passing week. The fervent hope, among resistors, is that his latest brand will ultimately go bust, like Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and Trump Shuttle. To rephrase Dylan Thomas, those of us who still revere democracy will not go gentle into that good night.