Fascism, like bankruptcy, happens in two ways. Gradually, then, suddenly.
What feels like a steady drip of horrifying state actions against minorities at once blows up into days of street fighting in the nation’s second-largest city. A monotonous drumbeat of racist rhetoric becomes the law of the land as the protections of citizenship are stripped from outgroups and dissidents alike. Strongman posturing comes off as buffoonish until the press is cowed enough to report the flex as fact.
There’s no doubting anymore that we’re living through America’s fascist moment. We’ve been brought to this place by the soft-handed son of a slumlord, a born-rich Fauntleroy who rode a wave of righteous indignation over the general lack of quality living in the United States to the highest office, propelled by his promise to make the lives of other people even worse.
However bad we thought Trump 2.0 might get on election night, the reality has proven to be much worse. Pardons don’t actually wipe away the stain of an insurrection. The concentration camp in the Florida swamp can’t be saved by a cutesy nickname or a line of winking merch. They’re here, blut und ehre, get used to it.
While the ever-shifting landscape of Trump’s America requires a white-knuckle grip on the now, it’s only natural to reflect on how we got to this point. And because this is still America, home of Hollywood, it helps to think about it in terms of the movies. There are few movies, and almost no musicals, that depict the nasty way that fascism tends to sneak in through the stage door before announcing itself in the spotlight like 1972’s “Cabaret.”
In the Bob Fosse-helmed and Liza Minelli-led film adaptation of the musical, the Nazi Party‘s rise creeps around the edges of a Berlin nightclub until it can be ignored no longer. While the movie begins with a fascist being bloodied and tossed out of the Kit Kat, shown in the warped mirror along the club’s wall, the world of the Berlin bohemians gets narrower and more fearful until they are suddenly surrounded by people who wish them dead.
The turning point of the film (and Weimar Berlin) is soundtracked by “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” a particularly terrifying nationalistic song belted by a young, towheaded boy on a sunny, clear day. As his scout’s uniform gains the unmistakable cap and armband of the Hitler Youth, more and more patrons on a patio where the main characters are chatting join in. The instrumentation becomes militaristic before the boy snaps a Roman Salute (or throws his heart out, if you prefer).
It was hard not to think of the scene when Donald Trump shared a MAGA hype video on Sunday, featuring vaseline-filtered footage of himself as a young man, his trademark blonde mop blowing in the breeze. The clip was underlaid by fawning discussion of his “mythical” rise from the outer boroughs to the White House.
The sound of chanting crowds swells behind the score, busy building and dropping like a dime-store Hans Zimmer, as Trump pumps his fist in the rain and survives an assassination attempt. Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the shooting in Butler, Penn., and the release weekend of “Superman, ” the implication is clear. Trump is the übermensch. Grab on to his cape and don’t worry about the little people on the ground. The montage closes with an update on the refrain from Fosse’s terrifying scene: the future belongs to us. The clip wouldn’t be the first time the GOP got caught toying with Nazi imagery. And, if it’s meant to be a reference, it’s unquestionable that Broadway megafan Trump knows what it means.
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Spoiler alert for a nearly 60-year-old musical: it doesn’t end well for the Kit Kat Klub. The final shot is one of the most foreboding in Hollywood history, with Nazis in uniform reflected in the cabaret’s distorted mirror, leering from the VIP seats at the front of the stage. And it’s a briefly funny idea that the famously still-living Minelli might outlast the American experiment, but only briefly.
Outside of the confines of the silver screen, we know that half the world banded together to make those grinning and ascendant fascists eat dirt. The future was not theirs, and their strongman shot himself while cowering underground. It’s a small comfort, given how much blood was spilled to get there, but a reason to keep organizing, protesting and flat-out fighting nonetheless.
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