He’s Alive — the prescience of the Twilight Zone and the danger of Trump.
First broadcast on the CBS network in 1963, the Season 4 Twilight Zone episode He’s Alive depicts the rise of a neo-nazi movement in the then contemporary United States. Like so many of the episodes written by the creator of the series, Rod Serling, it stood as a warning for the US, less than twenty years after the end of World War 2. This episode in particular however is all the more terrifying, as its warning was not heeded, and the circumstances it describes have come to pass.
Ernst Ganz: I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it all before.
Drug Store Proprietor: That was another time, Mr. Ganz. Another place, another kind of people. That doesn’t go here.
Ernst Ganz: That’s what we said, too. They were brown scum. Temporary insanity, part of the passing scene, too monstrous to be real. So, we ignored them or laughed at them. Because we couldn’t believe that there were enough insane people to walk alongside of them. And then one morning, the country woke up from an uneasy sleep, and there was no more laughter.
In the episode, a young neo-nazi leader, failing to get his message across finds inspiration and then instruction in a shadowy figure who helps him build from a handful of friends to a street movement with hundreds coming to hear him speak. The twist in the tale is that this figure is Adolf Hitler himself.
Serling: Where will he go next? This phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare. Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive. He’s alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He’s alive because, through these things, we keep him alive.
On Monday 20 January, 2025, almost 62 years to the day from the broadcast of this episode, the first outspokenly fascist president in US history will be sworn in. The words of Mr Serling above describe exactly Trump’s rise to power. But more concerning is that now, 4 years after Trump’s initial election (which he spent mostly on the golf course), is the movement behind him. He now has a court of Christian Nationalists who, by massaging his psychotic narcissism, continue to exploit his stupidity and incompetence to push through their radical misogynist and racist agenda.
The horrors we are about to witness, of a fascist superpower with no checks and balances, are unprecedented.
The suffering inflicted will not be limited to the US, as Trump intends to use US trade, in breach of international law and some treaties established during his previous reign, to force other countries to comply with his ideology. The tariffs and interruption to trade that he has threatened to place on countries formerly described as allies is of a kind that in previous decades has been the pretext for war. Already US companies are predicting mass lay offs as they will simply be no longer able to function, and millions will be forced into poverty as food prices soar.
Outside the US, countries are desperately looking into alternative trade partners and legal redress against the US. But the collapse of the Canadian and Mexican economies could be seen to be a part of the long term strategy. Governments who fail the poor are ripe for the injection of far right ideas — and this tactic is nothing new for US foreign policy in the latter half of the last century. Democratic governments across the developing world were overthrown by the surruptitious influence and interference of the US to be replaced with authoritarian ‘client’ leaders, to secure US investment and prevent the spread of human rights, freedom and what the US saw as dangerous socialism.
Trump’s MAGA has no need of secrecy or subversion — it will use brute force and ignorance to achieve its goals. And this has already been threatened with the possible deployment of the US armed forces on US soil, and moves already in place to remove senior officers who will obey their oath to the constitution rather than the orders of the Commander in Chief.
It’s easy to point and say that Serling was prescient in the return of this nightmare. However in doing so it is easy to read past the condemnation, the accusation and the blame for this. This is our fault. We keep him alive. We thought he was a joke, we didn’t believe that so many people would chose hate. We realised too late and used the wrong tactics. After Trump’s first win, we should have realised. In the UK, the same prejudice and ignorance was exploited in the Brexit vote. We should be well aware now of the very real danger that the Tory move to the right, and far right racist figures like Farage and Robinson pose to our society and freedoms.
The fascist win in the US will only embolden far right movements in the UK and elsewhere.
We are already arguably witnessing how the mainstream media are normalising these policies and opinions — after all they’ve had good practice in the almost universal defence and in some areas support for the genocide in Palestine.
We also know that there is no way to defeat these policies, this mythology, this cultural identity by pandering to it or seeking to absorb it in the way the European centrist parties are trying to do. If a party does not stand for the poor they will go to the ones who claim to be listening, who say they are the ones for real change, who dare say the things that dare not be said. Centrism will only enable the far right. The only thing that can derail these arguments is radical social reform, to address poverty, education, social and healthcare directly. If you remove the ills that the poor are suffering, then it becomes much harder to justify these prejudices, scapegoat or recruit to the cause.
People can’t follow a banner if there is no banner.
We know that when we are dealing with identity politics, facts, science, statistics do not matter. People are voting on the basis of opinion and emotion, things that they can understand at visceral level. Do you win over someone’s vote by telling them that if they continue to live as they are doing then their children will see the collapse of our ecosystem? Or do you get them on board by telling them there is no crisis and you can make their fuel cheaper? You paint the science as being lefty nonsense, you portray it as something alien, you associate it with an identity or system of beliefs (woke) which you portray as ‘unpatriotic’. Do that right and the whole thing, whole tracts of policy can be wiped out at a stroke, without even the need to say anything more than one word. If you are coming to hustings with facts and figures, you’ve already lost.
Nigel Farage, a reported nazi wannabe from an early age, was a privately educated investment banker before finding fame and expenses cash as an almost-always absent member of the EU parliament. Through political manipulation and the exploitation of racist fears, the use of personal data and bankrolled from the US and other sources, threatening a tory party split he managed not only to scare the tory leader and PM into holding the Brexit referendum, but win it. His campaign was wholly based on racism, lies, conspiracy theories with no relation to the facts or predictions of what would happen to the UK economy as a result. He had no need of any facts or figures. He was talking about the defence of a fake English identity, a lie with its foundation in the propaganda of a war that ended a generation ago. Sunlit uplands, spitfires, D-Day, Dunkirk, the Blitz. Keep Calm and Carry On. He said the English culture needed to be defended. His first task was to create this ‘culture’, and plant himself solidly within it. He is the identifiable ‘man down the pub’ with a pint and a fag in his hand, who understands ‘the working man’.
He’s a millionaire with money stashed offshore. Since being elected in 2024 he’s spent more time ‘working’ in the US courting the far-right, and has not once run a surgery in the constituency that elected him, lying about the reasons why not.
There is fear about what may happen should Elon Musk bankroll Reform plc and propel Farage into Number 10. This is a credible threat especially if Starmer continues on the road he has already set himself. However, what is there to stop Trump simply demanding that Starmer be replaced? The UK does almost 20% of its trade with the US, amounting to approximately £300bn. All Trump has to do to collapse the UK economy is threaten tariffs and tear up the existing trade treaties in the way he is threatening with Canada and Mexico. Install a Trump-friendly ‘government’ or else. The UK could not see refuge in the EU overnight — and the EU may refuse to help as they will also be under attack from both Russia and the US. Which way will an authoritarian India go in this scenario? The commonwealth cannot help us even if they dare stand against Trump.
This Christmas may well be the last one that many US citizens celebrate in freedom with their families. Over the horizon, just next month, fear returns. We let this happen. We cannot let it happen again, and we must organise our resistance now to fight identity politics and far tight populism on its own terms and using its weapons against it. We cannot and must not capitulate, appease, seek to pander to potential voters by normalising and legitimising racism and xenophobia.
Anyplace, everyplace, where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive. He’s alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being.
He’s alive because, through these things, we keep him alive.
