THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew

Forty years ago, I came to Madison, Wisconsin, to work for The Progressive magazine after a stint at a publication founded by Ralph Nader. I admired The Progressive (still do!), and I relished the opportunity to live in a state with such a clean reputation and a storied progressive tradition.

Well, Wisconsin is not clean anymore, and it has long since lost its claim as a laboratory for democracy.

Under eight years of Republican Governor Scott Walker, the state evolved into a laboratory for plutocracy, a Petri dish for the Koch brothers, and a how-to manual for rolling back the clock.

Walker is gone now, but the Republicans still control the state legislature, and they have used that power not only to tie the hands of Democratic Governor Tony Evers but also to push a broad anti-democracy agenda.

From repeating the "Big Lie" about Trump being the true winner of the 2020 election, to introducing voter suppression bills, to messing with the commission overseeing elections, to perpetuating the nation's most gerrymandered electoral districts, the Republicans in Wisconsin have been following a ter-rifyingly regressive playbook.

But Wisconsin is just a microcosm of these issues, so let's look at the big picture: There is a militant, aggressive anti-democracy movement afoot in our land. Its leaders include Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Mike Lindell, and Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Paul Gosar. And it has a mass base, embraced by a significant share of Republicans, which adds to its fascist stench.

This movement consists of a toxic combination of white nationalism, the Trump cult, irrationalism (e.g., COVID deniers and QAnon followers), and the rightwing media ecosystem that fuels it all. It is a formidable threat that we underestimate at our peril.

In the last issue of The Progressive, Editor Bill Lueders laid out much of the craziness that exists here in Wisconsin (see "The Party of Fraud"). Here are some further examples: At the outer edges of insanity, there is Republican State Representative Timothy Ramthun, who proposed in November 2020 that Wisconsin should withdraw its Electoral College votes ahead of their certification and Biden's Inauguration in January, even though there is no provision in the U.S. Constitution for such a do-over. Then there is Republican State Representative Janel Brandtjen, who actually chairs the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, telling her...