Trump Is No Fascist

[SomeGuy]

Orwell had something to say about the uses, and misuses, of the word "fascism".

[pbrower2a]

Quote:Most of us are reluctant to draw comparisons to what’s happening now and what happened in the 1930’s: “Donald Trump isn’t Adolf Hitler.” And no; no, he isn’t. Nor is this the 1930’s. Nor is the United States Germany.

But since Trump’s campaign first began to gain a toehold, the similarities between his style of campaigning and the behavior of fascists have been so strong that it’s been hard not to at least raise an eyebrow. And the analyses by journalists and historians I’ve been reading over the past year haven’t made me feel any better.

I’ve been amazed at how many well-respected commentators (respected by me, anyway) – conservatives, moderates, and liberals – have drawn comparisons between Donald Trump’s growing popularity and that of fascists. Drawing comparisons, and, as the months passed, adding warnings.

In an interview published in Slate last February, Robert Paxton, history professor emeritus at Columbia University and an expert on fascism, spelled out what he saw as both the “echoes” and the “profound differences” between what the current presidential campaign and the rise of fascism in 1920’s-1930’s Germany and Italy.

One difference: Both Hitler and Mussolini, Paxton noted, railed against “aggressive individualism,” which they believed was the source of their country’s problems. Trump – and many Republicans – “have celebrated individualism to the absolute total extreme,” Paxton wrote.

Another major difference: Germany had just lost a devastating war and was hit by a severe depression. Italy “was on the brink of civil war.”

“We have serious problems,” Paxton wrote, “but there’s no objective conditions that come anywhere near the seriousness of what those countries were facing.”

Paxton was finding plenty of echoes, though. First: Trump’s campaign themes. “The use of ethnic stereotypes and exploitation of fear of foreigners is directly out of a fascist’s recipe book,” Paxton wrote. “‘Making the country great again’ sounds exactly like the fascist movements.”

Also similar: Trump’s focus on national decline, “one of the most prominent emotional states evoked in fascist discourse,” Paxton said. While that decline was real in Germany and Italy and isn’t in the US, many of Trump’s followers believe that it is.

Another echo: Trump’s “style and technique.” “He even looks like Mussolini in the way he sticks his lower jaw out,” Paxton wrote, “and also the bluster, the skill at sensing the mood of the crowd, the skillful use of media.”

Another: Neither Hitler nor Mussolini had real platforms, real programs that they stuck to when they got in power. Both men were inconsistent, Paxton wrote, “totally opportunistic.”

Then there’s this, from a Washington Post column in May by Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Kagan, titled “This Is How Fascism Comes to America”: “As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France – that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people.”

http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/ro...id=2948348

Yes, Donald Trump shows how fragile democracy can be even in the USA. He has found seams in our democratic heritage: disdain for foreigners, contempt for the intelligentsia, offer of a mythological past of 'greatness' even if such is terribly flawed, and the belief that a strongman (whether a general or a businessman) can uniquely solve his country's problems. His opportunistic contempt for process and precedent characterizes an extremist.

If the support of aggressive individualism is uncharacteristic of the communitarian pretensions of German and Japanese fascism as exemplified in such terms as Volksgemeinschaft and Kokutai that refute the individualism weaker in Germany and Japan, aggressive individualism is very much a part of American culture. American reactionaries have long expressed aggressive individualism as an American virtue. Fascists of all kinds exploit the cultural identity of the countries that they infest, and typically reject 'foreign' ways.

I am tempted to believe that aggressive individualism, so long as it is confined to an elite, is compatible with fascism because it is consistent with Gilded-Age plutocrats and reactionary Planters who as much as they could tried to keep others cowed into subjection. But let it become part of the way of the resistance to President Trump's authoritarianism and it can make a right-wing consolidation of power precarious.

[SomeGuy]

And in this guy's case he has been ranting about incipient fascism at least as long as I have been here.  It doesn't have anything to do with Trump.

[pbrower2a]

(02-07-2017, 12:04 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: David Kaiser, with whom many of you are very familiar, was a frequent poster on this forum in the past.  He has his own blog now, History Unfolding, which he periodically ties into Fourth Turning theory: http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/

Almost a year ago, he penned a column for Time magazine that is germane to this thread: "Fascism Isn't Our Problem"

It begins this way--

As Donald Trump moves nearer and nearer to the Republican nomination, history is becoming more fashionable. The media are awash with comparisons between Trump and Hitler and Trump and Mussolini, and Google searches for those pairs of names turn up 45 million and 2 million hits, respectively. Detailed analyses of Trump’s relationship to Fascism have appeared in major online publications. An anti-Trump Republican PAC is standing up an ad campaign explicitly comparing the candidate to Hitler. Even Mike Godwin, the inventor of “Godwin’s Law”—that any prolonged argument on the internet will end in a comparison of one’s opponents to Hitler—has encouraged us to go ahead and make such comparisons, provided they are carefully thought out and historically sophisticated.

The comparisons are inevitable, but Trump is not Mussolini or Hitler. And, no matter what you think of him, he is not by any stretch of the imagination a genuine Fascist...

You can read further at this link: http://time.com/4271114/2016-fascism/

So let me pose a rhetorical question to anyone on this forum who deigns to answer: Why, when it comes to Donald Trump, are people reaching as never before for historical analogues?  (I'm guilty, too.)

It could be that because Donald Trump fits no obvious analogue in American history, those who try to understand him must look to foreign analogues. If he isn't a fascist, then what is he? He's certainly not a Communist. He may have a few things in common with Baathist leaders of Syria or formerly in Iraq -- but what he shares with the ideology of those Baathist regimes he also shares with fascists. He's not trying to set himself and his family as monarchs. (If we are to have a monarchy, then turn to the House of Windsor or the House of Orange... maybe the House of Bourbon and the Two Sicilies...)

Once he became President he became about as pure a reactionary as he could be, more like a Bircher than like a Nazi or even a Ku Kluxist (the KKK in all current manifestations is fascist, and even the 1915 KKK that existed before Mussolini defined himself as a fascist presaged much that is distinctly fascist outside the USA). Birchites are pieces of work, but they allegedly reject fascism as un-American almost to the extent that they reject Communism and modernism.  But Birchites have defined themselves more by what they are against than what they are for.

The fit comparison is to Vladimir Putin, whose friendship he prefers to that of any democratically-elected leader. Trump is a fascist if you call Putin a fascist. But what does Putin really believe? I see an attempt to meld characteristics both of the Soviet system that he once served and the luxurious pomp of the tsarist era. Democracy is always messy to any authoritarian.

[Eric the Green]

There are quite a few reasons to say that fascism has to do with Trump. On the other hand, no current politicians or approaches to issue are necessarily exactly the same as earlier ones. The Bannon/Dugin trend is not identical to fascism or communism, but it does have analogies and similar dangers. Trump is not Hitler, but he did have his book on his bedtable. And Trump may indeed actually be Mussolini, but still in a different context historically and nationally.

[pbrower2a]

(02-07-2017, 12:57 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: And in this guy's case he has been ranting about incipient fascism at least as long as I have been here.  It doesn't have anything to do with Trump.

It had nothing to do with Donald Trump. I got paranoid about Karl Rove exercising unconstitutional power through the flawed rule of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

This is a Crisis Era, and institutions always face severe danger in Crisis Eras as in no other times. As the Crisis of 1860 loomed, the slave-holding interests were on the brink of taking over the American political order completely. There was the Business Plot that failed, and of course Axis aggression intent on subjugating the USA in whole or part in the Crisis of 1940.

Opportunists like Donald Trump can exploit ethnic and religious resentments among people who feel themselves left behind during economic change. First I laughed at him. Then I thought that he could not win. Now I dread him. I can imagine an America best described as a "Christian and Corporate State" in which the mandated ethos for the common man is to suffer for the Master Class so that one can get Pie in the Sky When You Die. The earthly demands will intensify, the earthly punishments will get more severe, and the rewards for toil will be slighter. Such is a raw deal in the extreme.

If one dislikes this one must resist it just to preserve some chance of maintaining or regaining some dignity.

[David Horn]

(02-06-2017, 09:49 AM)nihilist moron Wrote: Bill O'Reilly says Putin is a killer.
Trump replies "you think we're so innocent?"
FOX News having fits this morning.
I'm starting to like this president.

Here.  Put this in your toolbox for later.

[SomeGuy]

Pbrower,

*sigh*

Yes, you imagined that Karl Rove was going to take over the country and create a fascist dictatorship.  When that didn't pan out, you began to talk about Scott Walker or someone doing the same thing.  You now imagine that Donald Trump will fit the bill.  I think the only constant here is your constant desire to imagine a fascist America.

I am pretty sure I know the actual reasons for why you do this, but rather than rehashing them at length perhaps you can simply find another outlet for indulging them.  The Man in the High Castle is a pretty good show, maybe you can wallow in it instead.

[David Horn]

(02-07-2017, 12:04 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: So let me pose a rhetorical question to anyone on this forum who deigns to answer: Why, when it comes to Donald Trump, are people reaching as never before for historical analogues?  (I'm guilty, too.)

I think that's an easy one.  Trump acts the part, intentionally or not.  He puffs and struts, and speaks in language that evokes the comparison.  He may turn out to be a wimp or he might go full-fascist, but he's not there yet ... not by a wide margin.

[pbrower2a]

(02-07-2017, 02:14 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Pbrower,

*sigh*

Yes, you imagined that Karl Rove was going to take over the country and create a fascist dictatorship.  When that didn't pan out, you began to talk about Scott Walker or someone doing the same thing.  You now imagine that Donald Trump will fit the bill.  I think the only constant here is your constant desire to imagine a fascist America.

I am pretty sure I know the actual reasons for why you do this, but rather than rehashing them at length perhaps you can simply find another outlet for indulging them.  The Man in the High Castle is a pretty good show, maybe you can wallow in it instead.

Anyone who bypasses or short-circuits the checks and balances of our Constitutional system is a menace to our democracy. Tyranny in any form is abominable whatever the name or its techniques of power. I do not care whether the tyrant is a monarchical despot, a Party boss, a military strongman, or a dictatorial President -- that tyranny is an abomination.

The lobbyist-controlled Congress is as much a problem as Donald Trump.  Since when have lobbyists been elected? Are they responsible to voters?

[Eric the Green]

(02-07-2017, 04:15 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(02-05-2017, 05:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump is one of the most famous of the elites. The people were deceived that they were voting against the elites. That is on them; it's on them to realize their mistake. They voted FOR the elites, whereas a vote for Hillary Clinton was a vote against the elites; however imperfect she was as a vehicle for such a vote.

Elites are not the peoples' representatives in government. The elites are the wealthy business interests. Unfortunately the people have been deceived into voting for representatives of the elites, instead of representatives of themselves.

Right now, I have no problem calling Trump a fascist. I could change my mind. But his actions so far can only be described as reprehensible in the extreme.

Whether Trump has been firetested seems to me irrelevant. It is the people who are being firetested. How fully will they respond to this (at least borderline) fascist, fully-corporate takeover of their country?

Our nation has been set on fire. What do we do about it, and how?

Trump does not really fit in with the true elites. He barely made it through school and only has an undergrad education. Although he lived in NYC growing up and part time as an adult, being of the new money he was never and will never be accepted by the NYC Blue Blood circles. He is tacky and gauche. Although he has traveled internationally he appears to lack true interest in other nations and their cultures. I have seen no indication he speaks any language besides English. I imply a number of these as negative. However, to Joe Sixpack, they are positives. He is no "limp wristed, cucked, furiner loving, darky oriented, freak."

He's a "real many man" just like the idol of Joe Sixpack, Putin.

I agree, and I would say that the only "real elites" are not educated and cultured people. They are merely the folks with money, and they have the power.

[Eric the Green]

(02-07-2017, 04:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 02:14 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Pbrower,

*sigh*

Yes, you imagined that Karl Rove was going to take over the country and create a fascist dictatorship.  When that didn't pan out, you began to talk about Scott Walker or someone doing the same thing.  You now imagine that Donald Trump will fit the bill.  I think the only constant here is your constant desire to imagine a fascist America.

I am pretty sure I know the actual reasons for why you do this, but rather than rehashing them at length perhaps you can simply find another outlet for indulging them.  The Man in the High Castle is a pretty good show, maybe you can wallow in it instead.

Anyone who bypasses or short-circuits the checks and balances of our Constitutional system is a menace to our democracy. Tyranny in any form is abominable whatever the name or its techniques of power. I do not care whether the tyrant is a monarchical despot, a Party boss, a military strongman, or a dictatorial President -- that tyranny is an abomination.

The lobbyist-controlled Congress is as much a problem as Donald Trump.  Since when have lobbyists been elected? Are they responsible to voters?

Well said, and these are not imaginary dangers now as SomeGuy seems to think. They are not inevitable, but only if the people now awaken, rise up and oppose this man and his Party.

[pbrower2a]

[Eric the Green]

Trump affronts and destroys every American and human value. The only correct approach to him is to oppose him, and his party.

He does not value or practice truth at all. "5 million illegal voters." No evidence, says every state official? Doesn't matter. Investigation ordered. "78 terrorist attacks not covered." The truth is that all 78 were covered, and most were outside the US anyway? Doesn't matter; "the media doesn't cover terrorist attacks." The truth does not matter to Trump. "Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese." The fact that this is false does not matter. Appoint climate deniers to the cabinet. The environment doesn't matter; appoint polluters, and throw out regulations preventing coal waste from being thrown into rivers by your friends. The environment doesn't matter. Stir up trouble with allies; give Putin the encouragement to subvert democracy in Eastern Europe and the USA. Doesn't matter; democracy is not a value. Only my executive orders count. Any rulings to the contrary? They are made by "so-called judges." They don't count. Judicial systems don't matter; only my orders matter. Exclude people from coming to the USA based on religion, and exclude refugees from a country that Amnesty International says has killed 400,000 of its people and killed and tortured its citizens. Life doesn't matter; truth doesn't matter, accepting immigrants is not a tradition we value anymore. Tear down the statue of liberty; it doesn't matter. Public education is not a value; destroy it and turn it over to for-profit companies. This is "reform." Only the rich should get an education. Public institutions don't matter; privatize everything. Everything should be decided by wealth. Repeal regulations and taxes on the wealthy; let them do whatever they want. Shut off the internet to the people. It doesn't matter. Let free enterprise reign, no matter at what cost to the people. It doesn't matter if the people didn't vote for this; it doesn't matter if congress approves it by a 51-50 vote. We have a mandate to destroy all worthwhile American values.

Trump is a cultist, he's a fascist, he's a traitor, he's a buffoon, he's a demagogue. All people of conscience should oppose him and his puppet party.

[pbrower2a]

(02-06-2017, 09:49 AM)nihilist moron Wrote: Bill O'Reilly says Putin is a killer.
Trump replies "you think we're so innocent?"
FOX News having fits this morning.
I'm starting to like this president.

Another explanation: some people at FoX News are beginning to recognize what a Frankenstein monster Donald Trump is. He has gone beyond the expectation of doctrinaire reaction to destructive madness.

[TeacherinExile]

A very thoughtful letter to the editor of The American Conservative (TAC), and an equally thoughtful reply, was posted on TAC's website.

But before providing the link to that, I would like to preface those letters with something that Chris Hedges, writing for Truthdig, had to say about keeping an open mind in our (still) highly divisive political environment.

If we are to succeed we will have to make alliances with people and groups whose professed political stances are different from ours and at times unpalatable to us. We will have to shed our ideological purity. Saul Alinsky, whose successor, Ed Chambers, was [Mike] Gecan’s mentor, argued that the ideological rigidity of the left—something epitomized in identity politics and political correctness—effectively severed it from the lives of working men and women. This was especially true during the Vietnam War when college students led the anti-war protests and the sons of the working class did the fighting and dying in Vietnam. But it is true today as liberals and the left dismiss Trump supporters as irredeemable racists and bigots and ignore their feelings of betrayal and very real suffering. Condemning those who support Trump is political suicide. Alinsky detested such moral litmus tests. He insisted that there were “no permanent enemies, no permanent allies, only permanent interests.”

“We have to listen to people unlike ourselves,” Gecan said, observing that this will be achieved not through the internet but through face-to-face relationships. “And once we’ve built a relationship we can agitate them and be willing to be agitated by them.”

Good advice, which Chris Hedges himself would do well to heed, self-admitted--sometimes uncompromising--socialist that he is.

Now for The American Conservative article:

"Is TAC Too Easy on Trump?"  A reader voices her concerns; the editor replies.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/a...-on-trump/

[Eric the Green]

I think people more on the left are going to need to work with people who may have some different opinions, or who emphasize concerns that are not our first priority. I think that largely means accepting different opinions among those on the left. We are still going to advocate for our positions on various issues, whether it be gun control, abortion, civil rights for all people, social and health programs, the environment and climate, peace and security, fair taxes, fair wages and salaries, fair trade. We will have different opinions, but we will need to accept them, if we can, in order to support a common set of candidates and movements. Politics requires building alliances, and different groups with different interests working together and supporting each other. Ideological purity may be desirable, but may not be a winning strategy. And in these times, we need to start winning again. And we must demand that our elected officials keep their promises and stand against the opposition.

[Kinser79]

(02-07-2017, 12:04 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: David Kaiser, with whom many of you are very familiar, was a frequent poster on this forum in the past.  He has his own blog now, History Unfolding, which he periodically ties into Fourth Turning theory: http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/

Almost a year ago, he penned a column for Time magazine that is germane to this thread: "Fascism Isn't Our Problem"

It begins this way--

As Donald Trump moves nearer and nearer to the Republican nomination, history is becoming more fashionable. The media are awash with comparisons between Trump and Hitler and Trump and Mussolini, and Google searches for those pairs of names turn up 45 million and 2 million hits, respectively. Detailed analyses of Trump’s relationship to Fascism have appeared in major online publications. An anti-Trump Republican PAC is standing up an ad campaign explicitly comparing the candidate to Hitler. Even Mike Godwin, the inventor of “Godwin’s Law”—that any prolonged argument on the internet will end in a comparison of one’s opponents to Hitler—has encouraged us to go ahead and make such comparisons, provided they are carefully thought out and historically sophisticated.

The comparisons are inevitable, but Trump is not Mussolini or Hitler. And, no matter what you think of him, he is not by any stretch of the imagination a genuine Fascist...

You can read further at this link: http://time.com/4271114/2016-fascism/

So let me pose a rhetorical question to anyone on this forum who deigns to answer: Why, when it comes to Donald Trump, are people reaching as never before for historical analogues?  (I'm guilty, too.)

David's article is good.  I actually miss his posts.  I may not have always agreed with him (from the right or the left) but I always found his posts thoughtful and intelligent.

To answer your question:  They aren't.  Lincoln was reviled as a Bonapart, as a Ceaser (I can only imagine that in the 19th century mind that was the worst they could come up with--Hitler and Mussolini hadn't been born yet).  And it wasn't just southerners who reviled Lincoln--many northerners did as well.  Lincoln did not become Saint Lincoln of the Civic Religion until after John W. Booth's bullet had lodged itself into his skull.

Jackson was reviled similarly by the Whigs. 

I could say John Adams was but Bonaparte was a contemporary of his.

But to get to the meat of the matter, I would think it is because he is going to be a major 4T figure.  Obama could have been that figure--I can't speak for Whites here but Blacks voted for Obama because we really wanted him to be "Tyrone from down the block".  We wanted him to tell the people "Now y'all listen up....This is the way its gonna be....<policy>.  Anyone what don't like that can kiss my black ass."  Instead we got Steve Urkle.

Kay and Peele had an "Obama Anger Translator" on their show.  My mother showed it to me and I said to her "The translator should be president."

[pbrower2a]

(02-16-2017, 09:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think people more on the left are going to need to work with people who may have some different opinions, or who emphasize concerns that are not our first priority. I think that largely means accepting different opinions among those on the left. We are still going to advocate for our positions on various issues, whether it be gun control, abortion, civil rights for all people, social and health programs, the environment and climate, peace and security, fair taxes, fair wages and salaries, fair trade. We will have different opinions, but we will need to accept them, if we can, in order to support a common set of candidates and movements. Politics requires building alliances, and different groups with different interests working together and supporting each other. Ideological purity may be desirable, but may not be a winning strategy. And in these times, we need to start winning again. And we must demand that our elected officials keep their promises and stand against the opposition.

We have little to say about gun control, abortion, or school prayer that will satisfy the Right. There are some people who believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as the Right people get their way. You can't argue with people who believe that the only purpose in life is to avoid the damnation of a harshly-judgmental God Who punishes any deviation from His Plan with the sort of retribution that I might expect God to give such people as Holocaust perpetrators.

If things are so gone for us liberals that the only way to make progressive reform possible is to create an economic order as harsh as what we had a century ago, then this country is lost. If we can't secede we must either acquiesce, emigrate, or die.

So what can we do for the religious fundamentalists? The best that we can offer them is that fair pay means that they can better serve God -- that they might tithe more because they have more to tithe. Maybe we can show that environmental stewardship is part of the Christian responsibility to God's world. Better education? The more knowledgeable that people are,  the better they can resist the wiles of the Devil.

Maybe we can show that the Master Class is grossly immoral. Why do they want ever more? So that they can indulge themselves even more fully?