Prepare to be concern-trolled by Clive Crook:
Donald Trump’s critics are making two kinds of mistake when they call him a fascist, or a proto-fascist, or a kind of fascist, or complain that his rallies evoke images of Nazi Germany and so forth. The first mistake is that he isn’t any kind of fascist. The second is that this line of attack at best serves no purpose, and at worst makes him stronger.
The rest of his column is one of the most wrongheaded and myopic things I’ve read in recent months.
Mr. Crook assures us that Trump is a dealmaker, and he’s not really so bad:
Trump isn’t opposing democracy or promising to scrap the Constitution. He isn’t calling for an expansion of state power. He isn’t summoning the nation’s collective will to purge imaginary enemies at home or abroad. (He’s opposed to illegal immigration, not to immigrants as such. His demand to block Muslim immigrants “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” was a dumb and damaging response to a deadly mass shooting, not a declaration of war on Islam.) He doesn’t idolize the military (ask John McCain). He isn’t demanding noble sacrifice to right historic wrongs. Could anything be less Trumpist than sacrifice?
If Trump believes in anything, it’s deals. Adolf Hitler never promised to make great deals.
I don’t think readers will find it too difficult to find examples of Trump promising to railroad the legislature (e.g., threatening Speaker of the House Paul Ryan) or to order the military to violate the Constitution (e.g., by killing women and children who happen to be related to suspected terrorists), nor do most people agree that Trump hasn’t essentially declared war on Islam (e.g., “Islam hates us”). You won’t have any trouble finding Trump quotes about how he idolizes the military (or the police or firefighters).
Never mind. This piece is too stupid to rebut in full.
It’s an embarrassing apology for what people are increasingly unembarrassed to say is straight-up fascism.
Clive Crook! There’s an onomatopoeic name that I haven’t heard in quite a long time. From the looks of it, I could do with it an even longer time yet.
Perhaps Trump is exploiting a constituency that was always out there but which was almost always excluded from mainstream political discourse. Throw in the degree to which the white male middle class has felt hollowed out by science and technology, free trade, the advancement of minorities and their relative lack of educational attainment, and you have the makings of a winning coalition of voters – for the Republic nomination at least.
But how will this play against the presumptive Democratic Nominee Hillary? She too, in may ways, represents all they hate – advocacy for women and minorities, free trade, science and educational attainment. Is there a National majority supporting the Trumpian position? For the sake of the US, and the world, I hope not. I would even be prepared to overlook some of her corporatist excesses if the alternative were Trump and his potential to mobilise a fascistic mob which could take over the institutions of the state whether in an absolute majority or not. (Hitler never got much over 30% of the popular vote).
But what will the Republican elite, the moderates, and the independent do when faced with a choice of Hillary vs. Trump? Some will no doubt endorse Trump in the hope of influencing/co-opting him to some degree. Many will no doubt cling to stories of pragmatism in practice not being reflective of his rhetoric in public. Many of the German elite thought the same about Hitler. This piece on Cook being a case in point
But the very fact that we can credibly talk in Hitler analogies should give all pause for thought. Is this really where the USA is heading? Right down to Williamson’s pathetically simplistic eugenic genetic theories? How far away is talking about “communities which deserve to die” away from the anti-Jewish pogroms of old – and this is in an organ of the Republican establishment. No wonder his supporters so like Trump’s scapegoatism of Mexican or Islamic communities. It has to be someone elses fault! And it is. The very Billionaire class trump so ably represents which has been systematically raping the rest of America.
Are they really so stupid that they can’t realize this? Tell me it isn’t true. “
Sorry, Frank.
It’s true.
It’s real.
And it is happening!!!
Right in front of the cameras of the world.
There will be no “surprises” if Trump gets elected, no more than will there be any surprises if HRC is elected and continues to support the neolib policies that she has so ably represented…and from which she, her husband and her employees/allies have so ably profited…over the past 25 years or so.
Caught between a rock and a hard place.
All of us.
All of us.
Like dat.
Watch.
AG
I’d suggest that the crowd raising their hands to “take the pledge” was just that: raising their hands. If you want a fascist salute, go to that photo of the woman in Chicago a few days ago when the Trump rally was cancelled. She was truly giving the “Sieg Heil” salute.
There are plenty of other reasons to call Trump the willing leader of an authoritarian, profoundly anti-democratic movement. The Trump phenomenon is a cult of personality. The 20th century was full of them.
“Fascist” is, like “communist”, a term of abuse in American political usage. Few Americans could even define these terms.
Trump and Trumpism are dangerous as hell.
The mere fact that the crowd does what he tells them to do — that they follow his orders (“Get him out of here” etc.) — is troubling in and of itself.
That’s bothered me from the beginning, from long before he was making them give pledges. I’m not giving any fucking pledge to anyone; it’s not the way I think. I’m an American. I’m not even comfortable pledging to the flag; I’m not going to pledge to someone at a podium.
You echo the thought of many here. In the larger world, many people find thought painful. They want a benevolent leader to be Big Daddy and take care of them as long as they pledge to do his bidding. They have succumbed to all the subliminal messages that tell them they are peasants, utter trash. They inwardly believe this. Service to their leader gives them a raison d’être. It gives their lives meaning. “I’d walk over my grandmother for Richard Nixon”, as an example.
Yes, the word “fascist” is used by many as a convenient pejorative for a wide variety of things. But “fascism” does have some real definitions, which bear considering when looking at the Trump phenomena.
Of course, the Robert Paxton definition is referred to a lot: “Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a massed-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external explansion.”
Then there is the one by Michael Mann:
Both of these definitions could arguably be applied to a lot of what we are seeing with Donald Trump.
What I find disturbing about the whole Trump Phenomenon is it has disturbing parallels with political conditions, and the rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia in the 1990’s when there was a growing feeling among Russians that they needed a strong man to whip the country back into shape. Pundits and academics referred to the Russians as “most comfortable with totalitarianism because they have never known anything different.” To see that same strain in something like thirty million American Trump supporters reveals something analogous and ugly about our own nation.
It is more indicative of the failure of the political process to engage with the real difficulties of governance in the midst of economic failure and the collapse of the ideological basis of power. For Russia, Soviet communism (state capitalism) had collapsed and its ideological statements were long ago hollow. For the US today, the conservative ideology that became ascendant with Reagan has proved that it can deliver nothing it promised, yet still has power over the true believers and the power of obstruction.
There are similarities, not least the general economic decline, the oligarchy making out like bandits and increase in substance abuse and suicides.
But Russia was in much worse shape, with mob wars, cops shaking people down daily in order to pay wages, young women sold to the west as prostitutes.
This is exactly how the rise of Hitler was rationalised in Britain in the 30ies.
Democracy Now! interviews organizers
In 1955, Milton Mayer’s analysis of German politics during the rise of Hitler, They Thought They Were Free was published. After 61 years, maybe we should go back an pay some attention to it. (Some excerpts at the link.)
Here is one excerpt:
What seems relevant is how the transformation of the process of government by Republicans and Democrats after 9/11 has made Trumpism possible. Security concerns, secrecy, invasion of privacy, and the one-way communication of elected officials through screening every channel of communications have made government remote from the people and non-responsive. Gerrymandering allows both individual Republicans and Democrats to choose their own voters even if the parties gerrymandered out suffer institutionally.
Trump is orchestrating PR to turn his tucking tail and running from Chicago into a narrative of strength and determination and a reason to organize a paramilitary. His cowardice in Chicago must be re-emphasized. He was not fleeing the violence of a mob; he was fleeing being confronted with people who would contradict his controlled narrative. He is the apotheosis of the one-way communication in American politics. He talks tough, but when confronted with reality he flees or goes bankrupt.
Emphasizing this cowardice now can save us from his cowardice once in office. When his powers as commander-in-chief can order into action the full force of the US military just because this little man is scared.
Munich was a deal
The Axis itself was a deal
Molotov-Ribbentrop was maybe one of the largest deals in world history
It is just that Hitler, much like Trump, wasn’t actually committed to all those deals. After he got the half of Czechoslovakia and Poland he bided his time until grabbing the rest, kind of like Drumpf promising his creditors he wouldn’t screw them on the deals.
“Adolf Hitler never promised to make great deals.”
Buy a history book clown.
Personally, the Trumpistas scared me more when they were Bushies.
From TarheelDem:
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Would modify “after 9/11” to “after WWII.” It been a continuous process of transformation inching towards fascism. Transformation that few people see and fewer are bothered by. The Pentagon was supposed to have been decommissioned at the end of WWII. By not doing that we’ve left in place a significant institution in place that is in ingredient of fascism. The militarization of local police departments has been an on-going effort since the 1960s. Another ingredient. Deregulating the financial and other industries and hollowing out the remaining oversight is another. The oligarchy funds those that run for public off and tells them what to do once in office. The seeds are all there.
But it’s not going to happen abruptly nor with a two-bit carny demagogue like Trump. Even if he could somehow manage to win the election, he’ll be given the finger by the Pentagon, Congress, and head honchos of major corporations. The Trumpsters are too old and too few to even win in a brawl with lefties today. (That wasn’t true in the late sixties.)
Not saying that these people aren’t dangerous — they coarsen public dialogue, promulgate hate, and incite violence. But we’re not a polite people, hate is always with us, and violence is an everyday reality. And they election people like Sheriff Arpaio who isn’t that much different from many sitting governors and members of Congress.
○ Really … ‘Authoritarianism’? Just Name the Beast Fascism
My diary a fortnight ago.