Mother Jones illustration; Rogelio V. Solis/AP; Allison Bailey/NurPhoto/ZUMA
The President of the nation’s leading Black civil rights organization has issued a stark warning to voters as the election shapes up to be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump—framing this year’s fight for the White House as a battle to beat back fascism itself.
“We are looking at Nazism part two,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, in an exclusive interview with Mother Jones’ Garrison Hayes last Thursday. “We need to be very careful.”
Watch the video excerpt:
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As President Biden was preparing for his State of the Union address last week to Congress, the NAACP unveiled a first-of-its-kind “Black Policy Agenda,” and invited Garrison to sit down with Johnson at the organization’s Washington, DC, headquarters for a wide-ranging discussion. The plan demands Congress and the Biden administration combat widespread attempts to restrict voting rights, while safeguarding labor rights, and pushing for criminal justice reform.
When asked by Garrison how the NAACP plans to tackle voter apathy, Johnson lamented the generally low turnout in American elections and emphasized the importance of intensifying efforts to mobilize voters. “We call [it] a high turnout election when about 60 percent of the eligible voters participate.” Johnson said. “We have a volunteer recruitment program. Our target is to recruit 300,000 volunteers to talk to their neighbor. They say, ‘Hey, are you ready to vote?'”
He added: “Our goal is to try to educate voters and get them to the polls, not tell them how to vote but get them there.”
But Johnson made it clear that he believes Americans are staring down the threat of authoritarianism if one side—that is, Trump’s—wins.
In the interview, Johnson called Trump “an individual that opens the door of racism.” As a result of his presidency, Johnson argued, “white supremacy has emboldened itself, because they see a leader that would say, ‘it’s okay to attack people.'” He warned that Trump, along with unregulated social media platforms, made it easy for extremist movements to “recruit, radicalize, and then people carry out harm to others.”
“That’s fascism,” he said. “It’s not about candidate A versus candidate B. It’s not about this political party versus that political party. It’s about whether or not we have a democracy or we have fascism. Period. Full stop.”
We’ll be releasing more clips from Garrison’s longer interview later this week.
