Steve Bannon has mapped out a clear and present strategy for using our own electoral system to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship.

 

There is only one barrier to the takeover: a powerful progressive grassroots election protection movement that’s savvy and well-funded and capably organized enough to defeat him.

 

Bannon’s plan is clear and simple. As he explained it on his Real America Voice program:

 

“We're going to take over the election apparatus. [Trump cultists with military and police training] are now going to volunteer to become a precinct committeeman, they're going to volunteer to become an election official, they're going to come and run for county clerk and overthrow these county clerks and they're going to take over the secretaries of state…And we're going to be relentless and we're not going to give up…And we're going to take over elections.”

 

Without massive clear-eyed grassroots opposition, there is no reason Bannon’s plan would not work.

 

With fanatic fascists as secretaries of state, the election apparatus in key swing states in the Heartland, old Confederacy and elsewhere would go straight to the Trump right, no matter how the public votes.

 

As we saw in Georgia 2020, Trump personally called the Republican Secretary of State demanding he swing some 12,000 votes. To his credit, Brad Raffensperger refused. But a Steve Bannonite would not. That’s their reason for putting him in there.

 

Bannon’s further point is to not let the vote count get even that far. His blitzkrieg is already rolling with foot soldiers whose military and police training…and guns of their own…will be difficult for ordinary citizens to withstand.

 

Through local elections or other means, Bannon’s “patriot” brown shirts will seize control of county and local election boards, running the voting however they like. That will certainly entail systematic Jim Crow elimination and intimidation of potential voters of youth and color, plus other suspected non-fascists, who will either be denied ballots, or will have them pitched in the trash.

 

In essence, nearly the entire national electoral system will be turned back to the pre 1960s South, and can be shaped to fit any electoral outcome Bannon wants.

 

As in school boards around the country, the assault on current election board officials is already being perpetrated with countless death threats pouring in over telephones and by other means. Physical intimidation is an essential element of a fascist takeover and the Bannonites are not shy.

 

The Democratic Party’s staggering lack of strategic focus, organized action, passion, and their inability to prioritize fighting back against a dangerous, highly organized, well funded, and fully transparent fascist authoritarian right wing movement can ultimately result in the destruction of our cherished democracy. The party’s abject failure in the recent Virginia governor’s race shows that the corporate Democrats are unprepared and incapable of opposing this assault. Bannon’s choreographed, focussed attack on our electoral system is far more than the Clintonites can handle. Their first response will be denial, followed by failure, followed by blaming the left.

 

Thus the resistance must come from the progressive grassroots, the election protection movement that has grown over the past two decades to demand universal registration, paper ballots, protected voting procedures, reliable vote counts and much more. It will need to self-fund, diverting donations from the Democrats to events like the upcoming Voting Rights Summer now being organized by election protection activists from throughout the country, working with established long-time progressive leaders prepared to do what must be done to save our democracy (www.grassrootsep.org).

 

In particular, all Bannonite Jim Crow operatives must be explicitly opposed. Local democracy centers must carefully monitor board elections and support pro-democracy candidates. Volunteer positions must be filled with supporters of universal suffrage. Every aspect of the electoral process from the precinct to the state must be dissected, understood and protected.

 

It would help if the movement could divert much of the tens of millions of contributors’ dollars the corporate Democrats perennially waste on worthless TV ads and high-priced consultants, as they just did in Virginia.

 

But make no mistake—-this is the battle of our lifetimes, for our democracy, our planet, our survival.

 

Steve Bannon knows exactly what he’s doing. Do we?