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When it looked like ultra-right-wing forces, led by former President Trump, might win the elections to the U.S. Congress on November 8, there was alarm that democracy in that country could suffer a huge setback, potentially even the disappearance of the democratic system itself. As political analyst John Nichols noted, “The November 9 election could be the last for a vanished democracy.”
After the results of the elections were known, it seemed that these fears were exaggerated. Although the extreme right – the Republican Party – won the elections in the House of Representatives, one of two legislative chambers in Congress, it lost the elections in the other, more powerful chamber, the Senate, which continues to be controlled by the Democratic Party. Hence, there was an outpouring of relief in the U.S. media (except those close to the extreme right) assuming that democracy had been saved.
But is this optimism justified? Does the U.S. have a democracy capable of resisting the rise of the ultra-right with fascist characteristics currently spreading worldwide? In this article I will present evidence that U.S. democracy has a baked-in bias towards the far-right that makes it very difficult to enact basic policies that benefit the majority of the people. This bias has created fertile conditions in the U.S. for fascism to grow. As someone who lived under a fascist regime in Spain, and knows fascism when I see it, I am alarmed by the growth of the ultra-right, with similar characteristics to the fascism I knew. Its growth is a consequence of the grave limitations of U.S. liberal democracy. Thus, it is premature to assume that a far-right takeover has been averted; on the contrary, it is time for urgent mobilization to stop it.