We Don’t Have Kings In America
Democratic messaging can be very simple: No kings.
If you would have told me in my early 20s, as I devoured every socialist magazine and book I could get my sweaty hands on that I would one day be open, even enthusiastic, about supporting a billionaire for president, I would have passively aggressively dismissed you and kept my nose firmly planted in my book.
But here I am making goo-goo eyes at JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, heir to the gratuitously wealthy Pritzker empire, and one of the 1,000 richest people on earth, who talks the anti-fascist talk and so far, does the corresponding walk. Pritzker – who you can almost hear griping about the Bears offensive line – seems to fit the uncommon mold of Democratic elected leaders who fully understand our plunge into a system of competitive authoritarianism.
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Pritzker, who has mocked and ridiculed Trump and his sycophants for years using (intentionally or not) the strategies of others who have fought fascism with dilemma actions, gave a State of the State address last week that could (should) serve as a rhetorical platform for all who oppose the dissolution of American democracy.
Pritzker in his State of the State speech did not just excoriate the Musk administration for its high crimes against the American people and its coup of the federal government. He also looked forward, beyond the current horrors – a crushingly difficult task considering the grand scope of the fascist assault against the United States. He asked Illinoisans – and Americans – to take the long view, beyond the dopamine of the current news cycle and all the pangs of anxiety that come with it.
“I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – after that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next,” Pritzker said. “All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.”
Pritzker said nothing about Caleb Williams' rookie season struggles. Curious.
Unlike so many high-profile Democrats, Pritzker did not hedge in calling out the nazi adoration that defines huge swaths of the American right wing today, as Elon Musk and his imitators throw around nazi salutes to signal their commitment to the fascist cause, which is oblivion. Whether these salutes are meant to trigger the libs or make for epic memes doesn’t matter. They are horrid and dangerous, and as Unpopular Front’s John Ganz wrote in a recent newsletter, you can’t “play around with these symbols without summoning hell and all its demons.” Maybe Musk knows this. Or maybe he’s just that immersed in a blackpilled reality of his own making.
Pritzker in his address to the Illinois legislature told the story of a 1978 neo-nazi march in Skokie, Illinois, home of a large Jewish population that included many Holocaust survivors. The state’s neo-nazi groups – whose trolling traditions have transitioned nicely into the social media age – planned to parade up and down the streets of Skokie dressed in nazi uniforms. The idea, as always, was to weaponize free speech to terrorize marginalized populations.
A major court battle ensued, and with the ACLU arguing in favor of the neo-nazis’ right to march, the fascists were given the legal green light. Local pushback had become so enormous, so all encompassing – extending well beyond the boundaries of the Skokie Jewish community – that the neo-nazis scrapped their plans and marched in Chicago instead. Because they are cowards and because they back down at the slightest sign of faithful opposition, a mere twenty neo-nazis showed up for the Chicago march and were met with thousands of anti-fascist protesters. The march was as pathetic as you could imagine. It fizzled in minutes.
“It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame,” Pritzer said during his speech, framing the modern fight between fascism and democracy as a battle between soul-corroding fear and the bravery we’ve seen in recent weeks from a select few elected officials. “Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the ‘tragic spirit of despair’ overcome us when our country needs us the most.”
Denny Carter
Pritzker’s address should function as a reminder that decent Americans, elected and otherwise, need to do what it takes to preserve democratic institutions for a post-Trump rebuild of the US. Musk’s unlawful assault on the federal bureaucracy will require years and years of recovery. We should think of the Musk coup in more traditional terms: It’s as if a foreign adversary has hijacked the American government and ripped it apart from the inside, intentionally making America weaker and more vulnerable. Nothing Musk and his nazi-curious DOGE boys have done differs from how a conqueror would destroy its conquered enemy. We will require another Reconstruction. Perhaps this time, with leadership that does not compromise our basic principles, we can see it through.
The analytics for surviving this fascist onslaught, believe it or not, are in our favor. Scholars whose expertise lies in authoritarianism said this month on the Foreign Affairs podcast that no democracy that has existed for half a century has fallen into outright authoritarianism, though several have backslid into competitive authoritarianism, which is quite different than the Real Thing. Considering the US wasn’t a true democracy in any sense of the term until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, our democracy is about sixty years old. The US seems to meet the threshold, so we have that going for us, which is nice. Our institutions might be old enough and entrenched enough to avoid being gutted entirely. My request for the analytics is this: One Time, baby.
Though it should be standard fare for any American politician, hearing an elected official promise he will be faithful to the U.S. Constitution, not the man who glibly refers to himself as a king, is heartening. That’s exactly what Pritzer did near the end of his State of the State address, rejecting the extraordinarily unconstitutional powers Trump has claimed thanks to the capitulation of the entire Republican Party and saying no, I won’t be playing that game in the coming years. Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett and other fearless Democratic Party officials, Pritzker has heard the threats from the paper tiger Musk administration and has refused to cede an inch. Because he knows these people will fold.
Denny Carter
When concentration camp filler Tom Homan went after Pritzker for pushing back on the administration’s deportation efforts, Pritzker calmly said Homan lacked the authority he claimed to have and committed to maintaining Illinois laws and ordinances that prevent local authorities from cooperating with ICE. Pritzker used the power of no, a power we saw on full display last week when Maine Governor Janet Mills said to Trump's face that her state would not comply with his illegal executive order meant to terrorize transgender people.
It’s not political ambition, Pritzker said during the State of the State, but his constitutional obligation to outright refuse capitulation to the fascists who have seized the federal government’s levers of power and threaten to yank those levers to inflict pain upon their enemies. For as many ways as Pritzker – who has a presidential hairline, importantly – could disappoint us in the coming years, at the very least he has been clear that he will not budge in the face of a tinpot dictator who mistakenly believes he is the law.
"We don't have kings in America,” Pritzker said, “and I don't intend to bend the knee to one."
Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.
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