Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Mussolini defined fascism as the “merger of state and corporate power.”
But not all corporations are equally complicit. Obviously, our current fascist moment is driven in part by a merger of the US government with the portfolio of companies owned by Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. The focus on the “broligarchy” of tech firms infiltrating the government to feather their own nests is something that I wrote about for The Type Media Center’s Tomdispatch in my essay “Cyberpunk Nation: How Donald Trump’s America Is Being Hacked by White Nationalism.”
But let us not forget Big Oil and Gas. During the 2024 campaign, Trump openly asked the petroleum and gas corporations for $1 billion in support, in return for which he pledged to destroy progress toward green energy and to adopt planet-wrecking pro-carbon policies. These carbon interests pumped nearly half a billion dollars into the presidential and congressional campaigns last year.
Trumpism is Carbonism, and it is all about corrupt money.
That is not to mention that after he went out of office in 2021, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman plopped a cool $2 billion into the coffers of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. That was perhaps the biggest single bribe in American political history, and it also aimed at making sure Trump would attack wind and solar power. I’m sure Riyadh wanted him to go on trashing all electric vehicles, too, since they pose an existential threat to the massive Saudi oil industry, but Trump’s desire for Elon Musk’s support created a countervailing set of motivations.
All these considerations point strongly to an emerging political reality: Resisting Trump’s fascist self-coup requires resisting the corporations that have merged with his state power and helped him thwart congressionally passed legislation as well as ignore judicial rulings.
In turn, such resistance requires us to boycott the petroleum, fossil gas, and coal companies.
Some 70% of petroleum is used to power vehicles in the form of gasoline or diesel. Transportation accounts for 28% of US carbon dioxide emissions, which are cooking the earth and causing climate breakdown.
And here consumers have an opportunity to rebel. In the good weather in the Midwest, about 8 months of the year, I try to bike to work, about 5 miles each way. It has been good for my heart health and good for the environment. Not everyone can do this, but if we can, we should.
Where it exists and will take us where we want to go, we should try to use mass transit. If it is raining I’ll take the city bus home. I can’t conveniently get very many places on mass transit in the Detroit area, since we don’t have a subway. I do take the train to Chicago whenever I go over there. If Trump destroys Amtrak, I’ll lose even that option. But Michigan’s voters could pressure the state to create more public transportation. How we vote is part of the resistance.
In my part of the country, the only practical way to avoid worshiping at the altar of Demon Oil at the moment is to drive an electric car. Not everyone can afford a new one, but there is now a market in used EVs. And anyway, I’m not arguing that everyone has to rush out and buy an electric car. I’m saying such a purchase is a tool available to those who can afford to, to fight one dimension of the state-and-corporate-power complex that has created our current fascist regime.
Photo by Jordan Rushton: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-ford-mustang-mach-e-18845908/.
Not only are they good politics, electric cars over their lifetimes emit far less carbon dioxide than internal combustion engine (ICE) automobiles. If you drive an EV in a state like California or Idaho or Washington state, where the electric grid is itself relatively clean, electric cars produce even less C02 on the road. Or if you have rooftop solar and either use a battery or charge during daylight hours, your CO2 production drops dramatically. That is, we aren’t all dependent on our state for clean energy. Those who own their own homes can make it themselves. And recycling lithium batteries cuts down dramatically on the CO2 produced in making them.
Electric vehicles are falling in price. Even in the US, which doesn’t let in the cheaper Chinese lines, there are some relatively affordable models. The basic remodeled 2026 Chevy Bolt, which will be available this fall, will likely go for $30,000. Although the old Bolt lost its federal tax rebate, the reboot may be eligible for $7500 back. We’ll see if the Trump regime honors the Inflation Reduction Act and offers this tax break. Anyway, $30,000 is substantially lower than the average car in the US. Chevy also has the Equinox and the Blazer electric vehicles, with the Equinox under $35,000, and both these models are eligible for the $7500 federal tax rebate.
For those wanting an SUV, the Ford Mustang Mach-E is an attractive vehicle. I’ve driven one and it handles nicely.
Even if Trump’s proposed tariffs put up the price of the newly redesigned Nissan Leaf, it will likely still be in the $36,000 range. The average cost of a new car in the US nowadays is $56,000, so that is still a bargain.
Most non-fascists won’t want to buy a Tesla, but there are plenty of alternatives. See this list.. And wouldn’t it be delicious if more MAGA people go electric to support Musk-Trump (or as I call them, MuMps)?
About 1 in 4 new car registrations in California were EVs last year, same as the previous year. In the European Union, they were 14%. And in the US as a whole, 8%.
Buying a car is a personal act in America. It reflects our family resources but also our aesthetics and our values. Making the US as a whole more like California in this regard will not only improve our air quality and our health, will not only help reduce our C02 emissions significantly, but will also defund ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, satanic entities who are complicity not only in destabilizing our climate but also in ripping up our Constitution. Defunding Big Oil will also pull the plug on bad actors like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, reducing their ability to interfere in American politics.
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