Abstract
In the aftermath of the storming of the US Capitol by far-right Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, with the collusion of elected officials and mainstream media and inaction by law enforcement, there have been increasing warnings about the rise of fascism in the US and the threat to American democracy. The origins of this are often traced to Donald Trump's campaign and presidency, as well as the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
While responding to a significant event and dangerous political developments, many failed to connect these to America's history of white supremacy, fascism and violence beyond Trump and Trumpism, which were represented as alien and unprecedented aberrations. Some even compared January 6 to Kristallnacht and a ‘banana republic’. President-elect Joe Biden claimed: ‘This is not who we are. […] America is about honor, decency, respect, and tolerance. That's who we are. That's who we’ve always been’. This image of America flies in the face of its violent white settler colonial foundation, history of slavery and segregation, and ongoing systemic and state racism, something acknowledged in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 by, amongst others, Biden.
Although Alexander Laban Hinton's It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US starts with the line ‘Donald Trump's presidency took the United States to the brink’ (ix), the author also argues that ‘Trump was not exceptional’. Instead, he was ‘a symptom of a long and enduring history of systemic white power in the United States, one filled with moments of genocide and mass violence’ (x). Laban Hinton therefore acknowledges the significance of Trump and related developments, but also links them to America's past and existing racist system and structures. By doing so, and looking at genocide specifically, he also makes racism, its implications and those at the sharp end of these the focus, as opposed to representing American democracy, the political system and status quo as the primary targets and victims. This challenges not only American exceptionalism and idealised notions of its history, identity and democracy, but also the exceptionalisation and externalisation of racism and white supremacy to individuals, extremists, the past, or another country so as to not implicate the system, mainstream and liberal democracy itself. This is what Aurelien Mondon and I refer to in our work as ‘illiberal racism’ and is most often exemplified by a focus on fascism and genocide (Mondon and Winter 2020).
A key takeaway of the Trump Presidency, which is also the book's thesis and gives it its title, is that it ‘can happen here’ (x). This is a play on Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, about the rise of a fascist dictator, Buzz Windrip, in America. Like Lewis's book, Laban Hinton's is also a response to those looking, through the lens of American exceptionalism, to the Nazis in Europe and denying the possibility of something similar occurring in the United States. What is different in Laban Hinton's context is that there are no shortages of voices arguing that it can. This is something bolstered by subsequent racist far right attacks, book bans, anti-Critical Race Theory and anti-trans legislation, and the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade. Yet, Laban Hinton's acknowledgement of white settler colonialism and the treatment of indigenous peoples, which is central to challenging American exceptionalism, points to the fact that it already happened ‘here’. This, along with slavery, segregation, lynching and ongoing state and systemic racism, is what many of those who raise the alarm about fascism and genocide coming to America don’t consider.
Such acknowledgement should not only mitigate against exceptionalism, but also against placing the threat in the future. That leads me to wonder why ‘rising’ and the future tense remain? Perhaps it is rising in a new form or one we have not seen for a long time, which would be to acknowledge the significance and real threat of Trumpism and white power today, but also possibly replace American exceptionalism with Trump exceptionalism, which has served the former and the denial of historical continuities and systemic racism.
Tensions between the past, present and future and their mirroring in the exceptional and endemic, systemic and extreme, and ‘here’ and elsewhere, run throughout the book. At times, these tensions are productive and interesting, while at others, they can be contradictory and problematic. These tensions may be produced because It Can Happen Here is both a state of the nation warning about America on the precipice of genocide and a challenge to exceptionalism and presentism that highlights systemic issues but approached through the author's particular experiences, reflections and reference points. These include Laban Hinton's expertise on the Cambodian genocide (including his testimony at the trial of Nuon Chea) and teaching about genocide, human rights and mass violence: ‘the motif of lessons learned directly informs the structure of the book’ and narratively, it is ‘centred around my experience of teaching during Trump's presidency’ (18).
The book is structured into five chapters (following the Preface and Introduction): Chapter 1. ‘Charlottesville Teach-in', introduces the reader to the ‘lesson' experience and narrative that runs through the book, Laban Hinton and his students. Chapter 2. ‘The Hater' focuses on the thinking of racist, white power leaders and activists. Chapter 3. ‘White Genocide' looks at forms and cases of racism, white power and white supremacy in American history. Chapter 4. ‘Could It Happen Here?' returns us to Lewis's question and subjects the information discussed and discerned thus far to a test of whether it can be described as genocidal. Finally, in Chapter 5. ‘Can It Be Prevented?', Laban Hinton discusses ways that Genocide can be prevented, from deradicalisation to education to truth commissions. These chapters are followed by a Conclusion and Epilogue, the former subtitled ‘The Bird', something more positive and hopeful than ‘The Snake’ that is the subtitle and starting point of the Introduction.
The snake is a reference to an early and ominous, as well as often repeated, Trump parable which is taken from a song by Al Wilson and informs the image of a fang baring snake in front of the White House on the book's cover, adding to the sense of threat and drama. The irony is that while it sounds like a parable of the evil, enemies and lies Trump's followers see and want to fight when coming from him, on the cover and next to the ominous title, it can also appear as a representation of Trump and Trumpism. Thus re-affirming one of the central narratives of the book, but also frontloading one of its central tensions: that between the representation of the threat posed by Trumpism as the externalised monster at the door and a more nuanced analysis of systemic racism and white supremacy in American history.
The Introduction also establishes the author's expertise, genocide as the central threat, and place of the Cambodian genocide in the analysis and assessment. We are also introduced to theories of fascism and intolerance developed in the context and shadow of the Holocaust, most notably, the American Jewish Committee's 1944 Studies in Prejudice project and Adorno and Flowerman's The Authoritarian Personality, in which they concluded that approximately 10% of the US population had the authoritarian personality type and 20% were predisposed (9). Despite the book's focus on the US, Nazism and European fascism cast a long shadow. While they have long-served to challenge notions of European exceptionalism, the fact that it occurred in Europe has served to absolve America and affirm its exceptionalism. It still is the case for both as we see the ways in which Nazism and wider fascism serve as the dominant reference point for ‘illiberal racism’ in ways that often serve the denial of systemic racism and legitimisation of liberal racism across Europe and the global north. Such European and Eurocentric exceptionalism is challenged by Aimé Césaire's important analysis of Nazi atrocities in relation to modernity and the racism and violence of European colonialism, which Laban Hinton highlights (8).
By using the Cambodian genocide, Laban Hinton challenges both American exceptionalism and Eurocentrism, unseating European fascism as the dominant reference point. Nevertheless, while European fascism has served as a model which absolved America, it was also represented as an aberration in Europe. Thus, keeping the theory, but moving it out of the west and global north and white supremacist contexts, may actually serve to reinforce this. In fact, placing the worst atrocities and violence in a former colonised context in the global south, one at the sharp end of American racist imperialism, and say to Americans – the worst that can happen is to become like Cambodia - may actually serve to reinforce the very racism at the heart of European colonialism and exceptionalism, as well as American exceptionalism, liberal racism, white power politics and imperialism. Despite efforts to challenge American exceptionalism and highlight racism, Hinton's analysis allows for this displacement. The work of Césaire and others would have been beneficial in negotiating such issues, but it is primarily assumptions from the field of Genocide Studies and Anthropology, where the author is situated, that are centred. While his expertise brings something new and important to the analysis of racism and white power in American history and at the current conjuncture, it also produces some of the aforementioned tensions, including making genocide the central way to challenge American exceptionalism and understand and measure the dangers of American racism. Had Laban Hinton, as a scholar of genocide, focused on the role of white settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in American history and ongoing systemic racism, this would have been a vital contribution that not only foregrounded genocide, eliminationism and mass violence, but also highlighted the problems with placing the threat in the future. Whereas the analysis of racism in American history, as well as Trump's speeches and policies, signify the more systemic and endemic problem, they are still subjected to tests whether they will lead to genocide, as opposed to other less ‘extreme’ but significant and existing implications and harms.
In the section on ‘Systemic White Supremacy’ in Chapter 3, Laban Hinton establishes the relationship between contemporary racism and the ‘global white-supremacist system that emerged with European colonial explorations of the New World, the slave trade, and capitalist expansion’ (96) and, through Patrick Wolfe (applying Lemkin), argues that settler colonialism was characterised by a ‘logic of elimination’ (96). Laban Hinton provides a brief overview with examples of racism throughout American history, such as the ‘Yellow Peril’ and Charlottesville, ending with the KKK and sections on Klan eras and white power phases where we meet William Piece, Robert Jay Mathews, David Lane and Timothy McVeigh before moving on to the Alt-Right and Matthew Heimbach. Thus, we get genocide and extremism, in the form of activist white power or white supremacy, but not an analysis of racist and white supremacist systems and structures themselves. In Chapter 4. ‘Can it Happen Here?’, the author returns to racism and the charge of genocide against the United States, by focusing on a petition by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), co-signed by W.E.B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones and others and presented to the UN in 1951. While the petition could be an opportunity to discuss systemic racism and white supremacy in America and its impact, the section becomes focused on that document itself and a discussion of both its claims and Lemkin's response to and rejection of it. Although Lemkin is treated critically, theories and tests for genocide, as a governing logic of this book and field, are repeated and reaffirmed.
While racism and white power are central to the analysis, the book lacks research on these. What is missing, particularly in Chapters 2 and 3, is an engagement with research on systems and structures of racism and white supremacy, including Critical Race Theory, from Sociology, Politics, Law and other disciplines. It would have been beneficial to bring in things outside the author's sphere of disciplinary knowledge and professional experience. Laban Hinton does get closer in Chapter 3, in the section on ‘Systemic White Supremacy’, but often refers to ‘scholars’ without naming specific authors aside from Wolfe and citing some foundational texts by Bonilla-Silva, Feagin, Fanon and Du Bois, without however discussing their specific research or analysis. Theories and studies of genocide, as well as the conceptualisation of fascism and authoritarianism, are given far more attention and nuance.
Some work on the far right is consulted, with emphasis disproportionately placed on media articles (although Madeline Albright's Fascism: A Warning also makes an appearance). This is problematic when you consider the role of the media in platforming, legitimising and mainstreaming white power, as Mondon and I have detailed in our work. Major sections of analysis of the far right and white power are based around close and uncritical readings of media articles and reports, used as research sources. One notable example is ‘A Voice of Hate in the Homeland’, a November 2017 New York Times article by Richard Fausset on white power radio host Tony Hovater, who was in Charlottesville, in Chapter 2. Any criticism of these, and other media profiles and reporting, is focused on what the individuals say, not the fact that they were given a platform in mainstream media or its role in mainstreaming and Trump(ism). When he does analyse the media, for ‘White Power in the Mainstream’ in Chapter 4, Laban Hinton focuses on Breitbart and Fox, leaving out mainstream and liberal media. As the book is focused on white power and the threat it poses, it would have benefited from a deeper analysis of the phenomenon and processes that got us here, including media platforming and mainstreaming, and not mainly whether it meets a threshold of genocide now that we are here at the point of worrying and writing.
While I have focused on some of the limitations and tensions, partly produced by the particularities of Laban Hinton's expertise and approach, where it is most productive, interesting and engaging is in the central narrative that runs through and structures the book: the teach-ins and discussions with his students. As an educator myself, I would have liked to be there. I remember how important those teach-ins were for us following 9/11 and at the beginning of the War on Terror. In a way, the grand questions and application of genocide theory, cases and tests makes sense at teach-ins and classes about genocide, human rights and mass violence. In the case of the former, it is about responding to a situation or crisis, the fears it may elicit and issues it brings to bear through discussion that makes use of the ideas, experiences and expertise, including on genocide, in the room. In the case of the latter, the discussion, readings and analysis would be governed by the topic and requirements of the course. That is not to say that books do not reflect the expertise of the author, have an educational function or cannot respond to major developments and focus on one major issue; They can and do. It is just that a major assessment of the past, present and future of the US in terms of racism, fascism and genocide for the public, fellow researchers and students should, ideally, fill in some of the gaps and engage with the wider issues and research. Perhaps I am asking for too much, but perhaps Laban Hinton is attempting to ask and answer too much. I wonder if the book would have been more effective had the author eschewed the popular state of the nation framing and written a smaller book that focused on the teach-ins and educational aspects or was specifically a reflection on his work, experience and ideas more broadly. I recommend the book for this aspect and so that readers – educators, researchers and students – can learn from it and arrive at their own assessment of the book's approach and important intervention.
