Op-Ed: Uneasy alliances needed to turn back MAGA nationalism

Uneasy alliances. That is a phrase that U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger, R-IL, has been using. Not to put words in his mouth, but he means that everyone who is not part of the MAGA movement needs to put aside their ideological and policy differences with each other, hold their noses and align uneasily — for as long as it takes — for the purpose of relegating Trumpism to history’s dustbin.

Kinzinger is right. In the early 1920s, Italian conservative Catholics, leftist socialists, moderate middle class and conservative business elite did not trust each other enough to stand up together in uneasy alliances against the rapid and steady rise of Benito Mussolini's far-right minor political party into the national fascist movement it became. Ultimately, the movement took over the government in October 1922, using intimidation tactics that featured their own very January 6th-like march on the Italian Parliament by Mussolini’s supporters.

Those demographic groups’ inability to join effectively in opposition to Mussolini ushered in the era of Italian fascism. Yet, that is exactly how right wing fascism in Italy and Germany was ultimately defeated — through uneasy alliances. Western capitalist democracies, like the U.S. and United Kingdom, put aside their mutual distrust to join forces with leftist socialist Russia — in order to defeat the overarching danger of right-wing fascism.

When it comes to extremist threats to democracy, right wing fascism needs to be defeated first because it is always the greater danger to a capitalist democracy than is left wing socialism simply because fascism is compatible with capitalism, while socialism is not. Once the bigger threat of right-wing fascism is defeated, the leftist socialists and conservative capitalists can have their cold war over policy and ideology — like the U.S. and U.S.S.R. did after defeating the Nazis.

Similarly, only after the bigger threat to China of right wing Japanese imperial fascism was defeated, did Mao Zedong and his leftists, and Chiang Kai Shek and his conservative nationalists, go back to fighting each other for dominance in China. However, during World War II, they held their noses and entered into an uneasy alliance to fight the Japanese for the greater good of the nation.

The lesson is clear. Those who are not part of the MAGA movement and who want to save American democracy have one choice. They must join in uneasy alliances to defeat what has morphed beyond a right-wing cult of personality around Trump, the demagogue, into an even scarier and more dangerous white Christian nationalist movement that is not going away, and is only digging in deeper, and getting angrier — with every FBI raid or DOJ indictment.

To MAGA nationalists, anyone not onboard with their agenda is their spiritual enemy — either a dangerous leftist radical liberal or a RINO (Republican in Name Only) with no real distinction seen between the two. Our regular political labels are outdated terms now. There are no more “liberals” or “conservatives,” nor are there even “Republicans” or “Democrats.” To the MAGA nationalist movement, an apostate is no different from an infidel. Thus, to them, Liz Cheney is exactly the same as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

There is no more luxury of waiting on the sidelines to see what happens. The 2022 and 2024 elections are no longer regular elections between Democrats and Republicans about policy and issues like abortion, immigration, inflation, and crime in cities. Instead, they represent the United States of America deciding whether, or not, it is willing to subject itself to a right-wing Christian nationalist, one-party regime for the next 20 years or so (or as Steve Bannon jubilantly declared, “for the next hundred years”).

Back in 1850, Charles Dudley Warner noted that “politics makes strange bedfellows.” But today, what we really need, before it is too late, are the uneasy alliances that Kinzinger is talking about.

Robert S. Nix is a lawyer in Philadelphia with Silvers, Langsam & Weitzman. He has taught political science as an adjunct professor, has been a political consultant on Republican Hispanic outreach and is a past Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania State Senate. He can be reached at rnix@myphillylawyer.com.

This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Op-Ed: Uneasy alliances needed to turn back MAGA nationalism