Madeleine Albright Dared Call It Fascism

 When elders die, they take with them years of experiences and the stories they derived from them.  Sometimes they take perspective and even wisdom.  Perspective and wisdom are not restricted to old age, but when they arise from experiences and years, it would be wise to respect them, and at least consider them. 

It is a lamentable commonplace that by the time elders have stories to tell, the young are not attuned to listen to them (except perhaps in cultures that honor such a tradition.)  When they were young, elders probably didn't extend their imaginations to their elders either, or wonder what their lives were like and what they learned from them.  

So it isn't surprising that the response to the death of Madeleine Albright is to honor her as the first woman to be the US Secretary of State, and discuss her accomplishments and typically mixed record in the 1990s.  (Although an elder's perspective would temper the temptation to call her--as some have--the first powerful woman in Washington.  FDR's Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was the first woman cabinet member in history, and a major architect of the New Deal.  Halle Flanagan changed the arts in America from the 1930s to now as head of the Federal Theatre Project.  And in the 1930s and 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt was vastly influential unofficially on matters within the US, and then officially she was a vital architect of the UN.)  

But Albright's accomplishments should not obscure the authority of her more recent work, and we would do well to take her more recent words seriously.  Yet we seldom do that for elders.  Upon her death, Jane Jacobs was justly lauded for The Death and Life of American Cities and other groundbreaking and standard-setting works on life in urban settings.  But her last book, of larger scope, was largely ignored. It was Dark Age Ahead.  It should have been read and taken seriously more than it has been.  It still can be.  The same is true of Jerome Kagan's final books on contemporary psychology.  And so on.

Madeleine Albright's 2018 book Fascism: A Warning was not ignored at the time, which was while Homemade Hitler was in the White House.  But I didn't see it more than mentioned in stories about her death and legacy, as if it no longer pertained.

But it does pertain, and not just to Putin in Russia or Xi in China, or the other regimes and parties in almost every country of the world.  Albright showed how fascism is based on unprincipled leaders, spewing lies they hope are popular, denying facts, feeding prejudices, willing to use violence to get and keep power, dealing with the world ego-manically, with absolute loyalty as the only test.  

This week the disgraceful Judiciary committee hearings in the US Senate fully illustrated all this and more. Righteously bellowed lies, complete contempt for norms of fairness within the committee, a scandalous lack of respect for a Black woman nominee, and particular support to the book-banning Know Nothing impulse of the fearful.  Right now the Republican party is the American Fascist Party.

We aren't there yet, Albright said in 2018.  But if these Republicans take over Congress beginning next year, and continue to create the conditions for unfair elections and right wing violence in the states, the US will be there: a Fascist nation.  

Albright's articulate and thoughtful words can't help but urge us to imagine what the current highly volatile situation in the world,  trembling on the edge of nuclear war, would be like if Homemade Hitler or any of his Cruz control twins were in the White House now.  Yet polls indicate that's what we're in for in 2024.

A lot can happen in two plus years, and even (one hopes) in the months before November 2022.  But heed Albright.  Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham may be Washington's greatest senior assholes, and Mitch McConnell remains the epitome of evil, but the American Fascist Party formerly known as Republicans now have a deep bench of fascistic zealots jockeying for attention by trying to outdo each other in crudity and cruelty.

Albright's voice and buoyant spirit are stilled now, and may she rest in peace.  But her words still echo, and they still live in the work she left behind.

To observe the rise of "authoritarianism" in the world, or "right-wing" and even "conservative" zealotry does not provide the proper perspective.  Madeleine Albright called it fascism, because she'd seen that, she'd learned from her elders, and she knew what it looks like.  And that's what it is.      

The Dunce

 He says no with his head

 but he says yes with his heart

 he says yes to what he loves

 he says no to the teacher

 he stands

 he is questioned

 and all the problems are posed

 sudden mad laughter seizes him

 and he erases all

 the words and figures

 names and dates

 sentences and snares

 and despite the teacher’s threats

 to the jeers of infant prodigies

 with chalk of every color

 on the blackboard of misfortune

 he draws the face of happiness. 

 --Jacques Prevert

 translated from the French by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 From an English language selection from Prevert’s collection titled Paroles (which means both words and passwords), published by City Lights Books. Jacques Prevert was born in France in 1900, and lived in Paris. His poems on the Spanish civil war attracted popular notice in the 1930s,when he was part of a political theatre troupe. For awhile he was part of the Surrealist movement but was ejected for being too anarchic.  His verses were passed hand to hand during the German Occupation of World War II, even before the publication of his first collection, Paroles, in 1946, which caused a national sensation.  His verses set to music also became highly popular in France.

A tribute to Prevert by the blog The Blue Lantern comments: "Abstraction, in words or images, meant little to Prevert who believed that 'everything starts from something.'  According to Prevert, if you paint a bird and the painting doesn't sing, 'It's a bad sign."

Prevert's parallel career as a screenwriter also began in the 30s and continued to the time of his death in 1977.  He remains an esteemed and popular poet in France, and is widely translated.

Top Photo: Jean-Pierre Leaud in Truffaut's The 400 Blows.