Chronicles on the Road to Fascism:

Toni Morrison and the Fascists' Path

This is the first in a series of occasional essays about the purposefully fascist, anti-democratic path that the presidency of Donald Trump seems hellbent to follow.

Toni Morrison was not only a brilliant novelist; she was also a brilliant, insightful social commentator. In 1995 she published an essay, “Racism and Fascism,” that with great prescience foreshadowed our present downward descent from a democratic state to an incipient fascist regime. Her observations are alarming because virtually every step she charts on the fascist path can be seen, in real time, in Trump’s transparently fascistic rhetoric; in his vile anti-immigrant hate-speech and demonization; in his immediate attempts, using overreaching executive orders and unlawful directives, to bring the whole of the United States government under his personal control; and in his barely veiled goal of replacing patriotic presidential service with dictatorial rule. Morrison, such an astute political observer, explains that fascism, “takes one step, then another, then another. Something, perhaps, like this: