American Fascism: If You Close Your Eyes It Won't Go Away

According to Deborah Baker, author of Charlottesville: An American Story, America has become the Charlottesville of the Unite the Right Rally of August 12, 2017. Baker, who grew up in Charlottesville in the shadow of Jefferson's Monticello, watched in shock as neo-Nazis marched through her hometown in August 2017 with torches and flags. What began as her attempt to understand how such hatred could manifest in a progressive college town became a deeper reckoning with America's buried histories and recurring tragedies. The fascist ideologies that once seemed confined to internet forums and fringe rallies have now, she argues, been institutionalized at the highest levels of government. The warning signs were there in 2017—but too many people, from university administrators to progressive leaders, chose to look away. If we close our eyes, she warns, it won’t go away.

five key takeaways

1. America Has Institutionalized Extremism

What began as fringe internet movements and basement trolling has now moved into the mainstream of American politics and government institutions. The ideologies that shocked people in Charlottesville 2017 are now, according to Baker, embedded at the highest levels of power.

2. Progressive Institutions Failed to Take the Threat Seriously

University administrators, mayors, and police chiefs in liberal Charlottesville told citizens to "stay home" and ignore the approaching Unite the Right rally. This pattern of progressive leadership closing their eyes to fascist organizing represents a dangerous institutional failure that continues today.

3. White Supremacy Has Always Married Anti-Semitism with Anti-Black Racism

The Nazi flags at Charlottesville weren't separate from the Confederate monuments debate. White supremacist ideology consistently portrays Jews as the puppet masters behind Black civil rights movements, combining European fascism with Southern white supremacy into a unified hateful worldview.

4. America's "Buried Histories" Keep Repeating

Baker discovered that Charlottesville had experienced a similar white supremacist rally in the 1950s that had been completely forgotten. This pattern of burying ugly chapters allows the same mistakes to be repeated, as communities fail to learn from their past encounters with organized hate.

5. Economic and Political Destabilization Creates Fertile Ground for Fascism

The conditions that radicalized figures like Richard Spencer include the "forever wars," the 2008 financial crisis, and the broader betrayal of working-class Americans. These "self-inflicted wounds" by American institutions create the chaos that fascist movements exploit to gain followers.

Deborah Baker was born in Charlottesville and grew up in Virginia, Puerto Rico and New England. She attended the University of Virginia and Cambridge University. Her first book, written in college, was Making a Farm: The Life of Robert Bly, published by Beacon Press in 1982. After working as a book editor and publisher, in 1990 she moved to Calcutta where she wrote In Extremis; The Life of Laura Riding. Published by Grove Press and Hamish Hamilton in the UK, it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1994. Her third book, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India was published by Penguin Press USA and Penguin India in 2008. In 2008–2009 she was a Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis C. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at The New York Public Library. There she researched and wrote The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, a narrative account of the life of an American convert to Islam. Pub