Was Trump’s Whistleblower a Deep State “Hack” or Someone Resisting Fascism?

Fascist movements have always claimed to “drain swamps.” But then publicizing false charges of corruption while engaging in corrupt practices is typical of fascist politics, as is their so-called anti-corruption campaigns which are frequently at the heart of their movement. Something else at the heart of their campaigns and movement is the need to purify existing institutions and replace them with like minded individuals who share the same kind of corrupt instincts and fascist ideology. This includes eliminating whistleblowers which might pose a threat in exposing them and their corrupt practices for who they really are and what they really stand for.

Fascism Corrupts Absolutely
Having already undergone a series of probes revealing a wide range of corruption from tax evasion and obstruction of justice to collusion with foreign entities to sway the 2016 election, Donald Trump dismissed a reported whistleblower complaint about incidents including a private conversation between him and a foreign leader to target his political rival. Calling it more “fake news” and “a joke” and that “the media was going to look really bad when it falls,” he and his supporters said it didn’t matter what he discussed with foreign leaders. That it was a Ukrainian witch hunt,” and the whistleblower was a partisan Deep State hack.”

Jason Stanley writes, “Fascist politicians characteristically decry corruption in the state they seek to take over, which is bizarre, given that fascist politicians themselves are invariably vastly more corrupt than those they seek to supplant or defeat.” This is due to their ideological underpinnings which create a paradoxical situation. Having dined in the belief that democracy and corruption are synonymous, they set about constructing a government system beside which the scandals of the previous one seems like small blemishes on the body politic compared to their own. In fact, corruption was the central organizing principle in both the Third Reich and with Italian fascists.

What Fascists Fear Most
The whistleblower report revealed Trump had repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine in a phone call to investigate Joe Biden (a leading political rival) and his son, Hunter, who was a director of a Ukrainian gas company when his father was vice president. The complaint was filed with Joseph Maguire, a Trump appointee and acting Director of National Intelligence. As Maguire restricted access to the report and refused to pass it on to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the White House and Justice Department sought to purge the whistleblower. This, despite the Inspector General for the intelligence community finding it “urgent” and “credible.

For the fascist politician, corruption is really about the corruption of purity rather than of law or of democratic institutions. Officially, the fascist politician’s denunciations of corruption sound like a denunciation of political corruption. But such talk intends to evoke corruption in the sense of the usurpation of the traditional order. In this latest case, with Trump requesting damaging information from a foreign leader on a political rival and then trying to silence the whistleblower, he’s simply purified corruption by replacing it with his own. It’s a corruption that’s now reserved only for him and loyalists. Any other views or quests for political power or the truth is a threat.

Hallmark Strategy for Fascists
It still includes President Barack Obama, America’s first black president. To Trump and many white loyalists, he must have been perceived as corrupt because of the very color of his skin and because he had occupied the White House. Biden is no different, linked to Obama politically and the leading Democratic. The same goes for women who try and attain positions of political power, like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, or Hispanics and Muslims such as Rep. Alexandria Oacasio-Cortez and Rep. Omar Ilhan. In each of these cases, fascist politics is not only about ideological corruption but the corruption of gender and racial purity rather than the law as well.

Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani admitted on Chris Cuomo’s CNN the two had repeatedly asked the new president of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens for a massive bribery scam. Trump also requested a review of $250 million in U.S. military assistance to a country fighting Russian-backed separatists and then canceled it when it appeared Ukraine’s president wasn’t going to reopen the investigation. Whether Trump was offering substantial U.S. military aid as a quid pro quo or not, it is clear he was requesting damaging information from a foreign leader on a political rival. Masking corruption under the guise of anti-corruption is a hallmark strategy for fascists.

You Decide: Mole or Resisting Fascism?
In the meantime, fascist politicians know their supporters will turn a blind eye to their own, true corruption since in their own case it is just a matter of members of the chosen nation taking what is and was rightfully theirs. They also know they can purge institutions and dismantle the rule of law. Not only did Trump shake up the intelligence communities by replacing dozens of people with political loyalists and with the dictates of individual rulers, but he’s done the same with the departments of Education, Labor, Environment, Defense, Energy, and Housing. He’s moreover stripped PPD-19, a new law under Obama which had enhanced protection for whistleblowers.

Was trump’s whistleblower a Deep State mole or someone resisting fascism? As the lust for money and power grows and is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other parties, races, genders, cultures, and regions or nations as to make one ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends, you be the judge.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.