Thread of What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

here you go guys

good question!

literally fasciscm was a political movement/totalitarian ideology but I guess most people use the word metaphorically now, not unlike how nazism is used (though I guess a few people identify as nazis but hardly any consider thmselves fascists)

Donald Trump is not a Fascist, a truth so obvious as to be worth the clusterfuck that's about to ensue

he is far-right
he has a hate campaign against members of a religious group that he sees as enemies of america
he is pro-war

but
besides being a birther he seems to be ok with democracy

i'm not an expert on this stuff but i think fascism was thought of as a reaction against both democracy and communism, which just seems idiotic now. so no, trump is not a fascist. yet.

he seems to be ok with democracy

imo Trump does not actually have a coherent ideology (whereas most memorable fascists adhered very closely to the ideology in which they explicitly believed, the ideology of fascism), but I'd be comfortable classifying him as a berzerker fascist because he says shit that's right in line with fascist governance -- national registry of Muslims, closing mosques, his obsession with national strength & power -- not security and robust health, but "beat the other guy" strength. so, in the imaginary world where he gets elected, he might well govern like a fascist, and he's certainly said plenty of fascist things.

but he probably couldn't, himself, provide any definition whatsoever of fascism. a fascist, however wrongheadedly, believes he is doing good for his nation. Trump's pathology is messier.

OTOH it's really fine to call him a fascist because calling assholes fascists is a time-honored tradition and we're not all fedora-sporting EXCUSE ME THAT'S NOT WHAT THE WORD MEANS bores

boomin' post

was Mussolini an asshole though?

Guessing this has already been linked elsewhere: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/10/9886152/donald-trump-fascism

Donald Trump has been endorsed by Stormfront's Don Black and by David Duke.

I'd be more concerned with Trump's supporters, who seem comfortable with fascist ideas and who would benefit from fascist policies.

Not that I think we are in danger of a fascist government, but the "Patriot" movement is fascist.

i like the distinction made in that vox article. for example there are numerous problematic governments + parties that don't deserve the fascist label like apartheid south africa which was a repressive, draconian, racist regime, but not really a fascist one. ppl calling their political opponents (on either side of the aisle) fascists has a long history but it kinda flattens the meaning of things. is trump a risk for inflaming racist violence? yes. would POTUS trump be a risk for shutting down the other 2 branches of govt and concentrating all State power into his hands? i don't think so, and there's no indication that's his plan. by contrast, hitler in 1923 was already trying to coup the government (which is to say that despite his later participation in the democratic german process his intentions to disassemble said democracy was present from the very beginning. even Stormfront racists are not necessarily fascist - bc if the word is to mean anything besides "political/ideological pov with whom i disagree" it needs to mean a particular political program. said program might include horrific racism, but that's not the trademark. also it's not like the left has a monopoly on misusing the term cf jonah goldberg's "liberal fascism" book.

thank u for starting this thread, mr. loves chachi.

also in a more general sense i'm v wary of flattening / histrionic language. it seems like inflammatory accusations (in various political arenas) are designed to inflame the passions of yr ideological cohorts more than make a sensible argument. but surely if trump deserves to be shunned + marginalized it's not bc he maybe fits some of the definitions of the word 'fascism,' but bc he has done and said actually terrible things. why add the extra step? a. trump said disgusting racist thing. b. we should shun him for that. why do we need to squeeze "therefore he's a fascist," in between? iirc slatestarcodex has written about how categorical language is used to collapse distinctions in the listeners' mind. really the use of fascism as a term of condemnation is a syllogism - x is a fascist; fascism is wrong (why? bc fascist european govts did disgusting things); therefore X is wrong. but if X is wrong on its own merits then it's unnecessary to compare X to Hitler or whomever is the stand-in in this argument for "we all agree he is evil and therefore anyone like him is also evil."

not a fascist. a poster child for why we need steep inheritance, income, and capital gains taxes. smug incurious privileged bullies like DT have way too much sway in our neo-feudal system

if anything the kind of robber baron demagoguery that Trump specializes is more unappealing than Fascism but i like the distinction because broadly speaking Fascists are team players (assuming you're on their team) where is Trump is a piggy-eyed leech who doesn't give a fuck about anything beyond his own gratification. even his Team America shtick is half a front and half his own wet dreams

also he's absolutely a product of American capitalism not a reaction against it

i'd be fine if a bunch of major media outlets wanted to run with the idea that trump is a fascist. who cares, nothing is sacred in that arena anyway. i got over the fact that obama was a 'socialist.' by the time the 'real fascists' arrive it's probably not going to matter much what we call them anyway

something that came up on the other thread is whether his desire to ban muslims (non-citizens?) from entering the US, and deporting 10 million undocumented immigrants, is an example of the obsession fascism has with cleansing but i'm not even sure if that's true. sure you could describe it as a cleansing but i don't think that trump thinks that mexicans or muslims are an inherent evil (and certainly not in the way Hitler felt about Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc). like this distinction is very subtle but he wants to keep muslims out of the country bc of worldwide islamic radicalism and he wants to deport 10 million undocumented immigrants bc they broke the law being in this country. both of those decisions are toxic and their implementation would lead to horrific violations of human rights. but both of those motivations are within the realm of rationality - there is radical islam in the world and there are a number of undocumented immigrants in this country. his solution to those problems is terrible but they are real problems. by contrast when we talk about fascist cleansing i think we mean an attempt to cleanse the population of the Other entirely - which is a motivation buried in a kind of irrational mythological understanding of the nation as a particular volk. in fact on a number of occasions i've seen trump say things like i love mexicans some of my favorite people are mexicans, whereas it wouldn't make sense for hitler to have been like no i like the jews i just think we need to figure out what to do w/ them until we have a solution to jewish terrorism. they were inherently a blemish on the unified nation by din of their coincidence of birth (which is why the racial laws were necessary), not bc of any kind of rational political motivation.

if anything the kind of robber baron demagoguery that Trump specializes is more unappealing than Fascism but i like the distinction because broadly speaking Fascists are team players (assuming you're on their team) where is Trump is a piggy-eyed leech who doesn't give a fuck about anything beyond his own gratification.

There was an interesting piece by Ollie Carroll, i think, this week suggesting that there are only two genuinely political parties in Ukraine at the moment - Fascist and Communist. Everyone else, including the whole of the mainstream, is a front for robber barons. Trump is not a fascist or 'genuinely political' in any meaningful sense but arguably one of the main dangers he poses is that blurring the lines of what passes for acceptable political discourse without actually proposing anything to address the economic and social grievances his supporters have is going to make irl fascism more attractive in the long run.

I think Trump's impulses re: Muslims and "Mexicans" are very much in line with fascist and other far right totalitarian regimes. Worth keeping in mind that Nazism didn't explicitly advocate ethnic cleansing as part of their platform (which is not to say that Hitler didn't believe that they should all be murdered as early as 1920) but were much initially focused on expulsion of non-Germans.

I gotta say I'm really confused by the "well he's not trying to dismantle democracy" line. I mean, if *you* decided to enact my tinfoil hat scenario from the primary thread, would you actually mention any antidemocratic intentions at this point?

Idk, maybe the term isn't fascist, but I feel like some form of widespread labeling needs to be done in order to differentiate him and whoever picks up his banner in four years as a different animal from the usual "Jesus told me to cut taxes" people, especially in the minds of people who, unlike me, are clever enough not to be wasting hours of their days every day following this bullshit. As scary as those guys can be, their gameplan doesn't trend towards the same kind of existential threat that makes an f-word-style regime so brutal and hard to reverse.

That said, I'm completely open to the idea that I just grew up post-Reagan and thus consider the actually-far-more-dangerous religious right to simply be a part of the scenery but am scared by the new shiny bad thing because it's new and shiny (to my personal experience, I mean, obviously this shit ain't new).

xp there's nothing in trump's presentation of history that suggests the kind of mythological cleansing of the other that hitler was obsessed w/. it's not like hitler got into power and then decided to get rid of all the jews. he was talking about jewish conspiracies and the stab-in-the-back myth very early on. it's all over mein kampf.

Indeed, in Mein Kampf, written in the early 1920s, Hitler explicitly linked the imagined deceit of the Jews in the First World War with the need for their destruction, saying that the ‘sacrifice of millions at the front’ would have been prevented if ‘twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas.’ii

moreover if you take his distinctions seriously he wants to get rid of undocumented immigrants (not American citizens of Mexican extract) and apparently backtracked on not allowing muslim American citizens into the united states. that's def not the totalizing of identity that fascism specializes in. the german people were germans, not jews or gypsies. ditto the italian people. but trump's American people includes Mexicans and Muslims. it's just the non-American Mexicans and Muslims he doesn't want and that isn't a concern exclusive to fascism unless you believe that all anti-immigrant sentiment is inherently fascistic but i see no reason to make that claim.

Nazism is hardly an ideology at all beyond the struggle of races and the anti-semitism at the heart of that, it's not only not incidental to Hitler's politics but his theoretical politics never went very far beyond it

Nazism isn't Fascism tbf

Right but Nazism also /= Fascism either, that's why it's a subset of it. I'd say Trump started demonizing immigrants and Muslims pretty much from the get go too. If your argument is "but he didn't doesn't say he want to kill them all so it's not fascism" then I think basically nothing that's Nazism will ever be Fascism to you.

I'm not saying that he's not a fascist because he didn't say he wants to kill them all. I'm saying that he is distinguishing within Mexican and Muslim groups which suggests a less than totalizing vision of peoplehood and Otherness.

Racial "cleansing" isn't necessarily inherent in fascism. The idea of rebirth is arguably more important. Racial "cleansing" is often the result of that impulse though.

If you wanted to make the case that Trump was a fascist, there's quite a lot of crossover between his movement and the palingenesis that is one of the core building blocks of fascism. There's nothing beyond the surface though.

think people shd draw some lines between "policies Trump really gives a shit about", "things Trump will say because he thinks it might get him elected", "things Trump will say because he enjoys playing the asshole character 'Donald Trump'" and "things Trump would actually be allowed to do by all the other power-holders in the US in the hugely unlikely event he became President?" because i think this stuff all makes a difference to how seriously you dissect his opinions/try to label him

altho to quote JCLC calling assholes fascists is a time-honored tradition

so i'm not sure that "make america great again" is an example of fascistic rebirth. not least because what president has not campaigned on some level under the banner of making american great again? isn't every non-incumbant campaign pretty much a "change" campaign? and he isn't really speaking to a rebirth of a white identity - even tho some supremacists have heard things that resonate for them. has he really talked at all about whiteness and white consciousness (both staples of supremacist movements)?

do we reveal anything new/useful about the world by calling him a fascist, or do we just enjoy having the opportunity to use the word?

everyone itt probably knows both the strict and loose definitions of the word fascist and understands donald trumps' political views and place vis-a-vis the republican party. there are aspects of his appeal that call back to strongman fascist leaders, but not so long ago we had a cowboy president who had a 90% approval rating and who said stuff like 'you're either with us or against us'. even though that guy was less openly racist I'm not sure the situation was less 'fascist'.

trump appeals to the white-identity nationalist reactionaries who form the base of the republican party. this group existed before donald trump and they'll exist after him, he just found himself w/ a bulworth-esque situation where he can say whatever he wants (so exactly what they want to hear rather than mostly what they want to hear) as he's not tied to any political donors or a political career.

geez I go tot sleep for a few hours

xxp It's not racial identity he's talking about, it's national identity. Pinochet was arguably not much more racist than a lot of other Latin American leaders.

Trump's palingenetic appeal - one great leader will return a faded and corrupt nation to its former glory by sweeping away the old order of both political stripes and giving birth to the new forged in his own image - is outside of the scope of yr standard politician who'll "make x great again" but i don't think he really believes it or would know what to do with the power given the opportunity.

"one great leader will return a faded and corrupt nation to its former glory by sweeping away the old order of both political stripes and giving birth to the new forged in his own image" i'm not going to say it's impossible to squint and see this as trump but i think it's a bit of a stretch. he's running as a republican, he says he likes a lot of the other candidates, he has agreed not to run as an independent, he's deeply indebted to the current system, he talks about america "winning again" but not as a rebirth or awakening. i think he's much closer to a candidate claiming to make america great again than a fascistic leader.

he has agreed not to run as an independent,

oh come on

you're penchant for giving him the benefit of the doubt is truly baffling

your egh it's early for me

i'm not giving him any benefit of the doubt, i'm just looking at what he has said and how he has presented himself. if we're talking about his true motivations i think there's a slam-dunk case that he's a berlusconi-style buffoon who doesn't believe or give a shit about any of this. if we're going to talk about him as a fascist it needs to be on the level of his political presentation and reception.

I'd argue he's not running as a Republican. He's running for the Republican nomination as Donald Trump. Either way, he's not really a fascist though i wouldn't discount the idea that there's a crossover between traditional fascism and some elements of his support base who wouldn't self-identify as such.

in the last debate they asked him (and then after the debate he was asked 2-3 more times in interviews) about whether he'd run as an independent and he said (not exact quote) that he has grown to respect the other candidates and he feels a part of the republican party and so no he has decided he won't run as an independent and he just hopes the republican party treats him fairly at the convention. he also kept emphasizing that in some polls he beats hillary bc i think he has moved onto making the case to the party that he is a bet they should take.

if we're talking about his true motivations i think there's a slam-dunk case that he's a berlusconi-style buffoon who doesn't believe or give a shit about any of this.

otm

he's made it abundantly clear his "commitment" to the Republican Party is conditional on how he's "treated" - he doesn't give a shit about the party.

he's using the party, he has no allegiance to it

i think he's going to try and start his own news network tbh

Actually Donald Trump isn't a fascist, he is a dumb whiny man-baby with freedom fries where his testicles should be

anyway I agree w what Alex in SF and JCLC have said so far and stand by what I said on the og campaign thread: there's enough overlap between the positions and statements Trump has made and traditionally fascist ideologies to merit the use of the term imo. I think it's strange and inaccurate to act like his racism and eagerness to exploit racism in his base are situational responses to particular conditions - there is no "problem" with undocumented immigrants or Muslims in the sense that Trump and his base think it is (that they're "taking American jobs", depressing wages, destroying American culture, pose a security threat, etc.), those are all window-dressing manifestations of deep-seated racism rooted in the sense that the volk (white + Christian) of America feel threatened. That his statements don't mirror or match the extent of Hitler's views is irrelevant, it's the appeal to the violation of "true" Americans, to the sense of aggrieved identity, that is fascist.

xp

since we've got this thread and part of the title is "what is fascism," let me ask a question i asked facebook yesterday:

In 1944 George Orwell wrote in "What is Fascism?":

But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make.

Here's the link for full context: http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc

do we reveal anything new/useful about the world by calling him a fascist, or do we just enjoy having the opportunity to use the word?

back to iatee's point, beyond our potential (ab)use of the term in our little backwater of the internet, to the limited extent that the press/media has any impact on the polity's grasp of the candidates I think it's useful for major media outlets to be comfortable applying the term to Chump, it could be useful in solidifying opposition to him and making the views he espouses less acceptable in the general discourse. I think the degree to which we can limit the general acceptability of hateful demagoguery with potentially violent consequences is an important end-goal in itself.

xp

What do you suppose are the admissions Orwell thinks Fascists, Conservatives and Socialists are unwilling to make?

I would assume he means they don't want to admit how much alike they can be

i don't know why you think in a political context saturated with accusations of fascism applied to all sorts of disparate figures, ideas + parties calling trump a fascist would be anything but another trump in that bucket

guys this is all just pre-opening hype for his DC hotel

https://www.trumphotelcollection.com/washington-dc/

mainstream media has always been p hesitant to apply the label (justifiably so), Trump campaign is the first time I've seen the term used in places like the Washington Post, for ex. Trump is different.

xp

I would assume he means they don't want to admit how much alike they can be

In politics the name of the game is gaining and maintaining broad popular support. This is as true of monarchies and oligarchies as of democracies. So it is not surprising that the tactics and strategies used by practitioners of the art, as opposed to the nostrums of political theorists and philosophers, will align in many basic ways. For example, scapegoating is universal and propaganda is indispensable. Machiavelli's advice is evergreen.

I'd say the features that distinguish fascism are more of degree and of emphasis than of kind. Stalinism and Nazism manipulated very different narratives and mythologies to enlist popular support, but their overall practical strategies were extremely similar and have been widely mimicked worldwide. In turn, those strategies were derived from long standing principles used by monarchies since forever.

Trump is piecing together a set of narratives and mythologies that would be very adaptable to establishing an extra-constitutional regime based on the presumed need to secure the nation from the dire threats posed by a set of easily-scapegoated outsiders, Mexicans and Muslims in this instance. He also casts himself as so far superior to his rivals as to be, in effect, a 'supreme leader'. These are primary foundations upon which to build a cult of personality and a police state.

So, yeah, Trump is following the fascist road, which is also the road to a totalitarian, extra-legal government focused on one leader.

Mexicans and Muslims in this instance

let's not forget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs

Along these lines, part of his appeal is "fight Putin with a Putin."

"Political scientists have long known that “government legitimacy,” or the popularity of particular administrations, is going down. But many of them have argued that “regime legitimacy,” or citizens’ attachment to democracy as a political system, is as strong as ever. Our research shows that this is just not true: Attachment to democracy has fallen over time, and from one generation to the next. … For Americans born in the 1930s, living in a democracy holds virtually sacred importance. Asked on a scale of 1 to 10 how important it is to them to live in a democracy, more than 70 percent give the highest answer. But many of their children and grandchildren are lukewarm. Among millennials — those born since the 1980s — fewer than 30 percent say that living in a democracy is essential."

http://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2015/12/18/9360663/is-democracy-in-trouble

gee it's almost as if capitalism's undermining of democracy over the last 80s years has made democracy look pointless

gotta love those hilariously alarmist graphs though

negative opinions of democracy have SKYROCKETED from 17% to 23% OMG WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO

btw, if you are looking to establish a popular, ultra-nationalist police state, then you don't need the intellectuals on your side, but you damn well better have strong support in the working class. intellectuals tend to shrink both from breaking heads or getting their own heads broken. they're more likely to take a principled stand and wind up safely buried as political prisoners - or corpses.

i hope this trump episode shows lots and lots of people that a supreme danger of laissez-faire trickle down bullshit is unqualified spoiled assholes are empowered to take over, but i'm not holding my breath

it's going to show more unqualified spoiled assholes they can run for office imo

like this distinction is very subtle but he wants to keep muslims out of the country bc of worldwide islamic radicalism and he wants to deport 10 million undocumented immigrants bc they broke the law being in this country.

no bearing on his 'fascism' but i think this distinction is a little too subtle. trump doesn't seem too wedded to the rule of law; he wants to deport 11m undocumented immigrants because all mexicans are rapists and drug dealers. he wants to keep muslims out because all muslims are terrorists. he enjoys chatting with jews because they're all nearly as shrewd at negotiation as he is. see also the central park five, statements about women, obama birtherism, etc. he has a very simplistic worldview that, funnily enough, boils down to people who aren't like him not deserving the same rights

anyway i'm less concerned about about trump himself than that he makes other assholes like cruz seem less extreme than they are

Shakey otm about how it's not that useful to view the thread as a referendum on the state of Trump's soul: "i don't think that trump thinks that mexicans or muslims are an inherent evil" isn't the point as much as whether, as a politician, he's willing to say things that warm the hearts of those that do.

The use of the word is (okay, ideally) less "we have successfully attached this label, minus 20 points to you" as much as you know, a description of a pattern that we can look for - basically http://www.theonion.com/article/historians-politely-remind-nation-to-check-whats-h-26183

Trump is an idiot without a coherent ideology but what if he picked an actual evil smart fascist dude for VP or something

An idiot without a coherent ideology can definitely get elected, make decisions that lead to the loss of important rights, turn democratic institutions into empty facades, and generally turn the country in a totalitarian direction, while remaining very popular. A smart VP isn't necessary, just an instinctive sense of what measures he can take that increase his arbitrary power, and which he can sell to the public as appropriate, each step along the way. Any canny opportunist will do the trick.

ok replace smart with "has Tea Party friends in the House"

nevermind me, just https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLKnCeeAW48 ing things up as usual

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWTffIhWEAAdxTq.png

USA at the time of european fascism was prob more racist or nativist than trump's wildest fantasies in 2015. i mean, ok there was WW2 going on but i mean

Approximately 600,000 Italian aliens lived in the United States in 1940. About 1,600 Italian citizens were interned, and about 10,000 Italian-Americans were forced to move from their houses in California coastal communities to inland homes.

There were approximately 264,000 German aliens in 1940. During the war 10,905 Germans and German-Americans as well as a number of Bulgarians, Czechs, Hungarians and Romanians were placed in internment camps.

In 1939 pollsters found that 53 percent of those interviewed agreed with the statement "Jews are different and should be restricted." Between 1933 and 1945 the United States took in only 132,000 Jewish refugees, only ten percent of the quota allowed by law.

Congress in 1939 refused to raise immigration quotas to admit 20,000 Jewish children fleeing Nazi oppression. As the wife of the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration remarked at a cocktail party, "20,000 children would all too soon grow up to be 20,000 ugly adults."

otm

*strokes beard* america was more racist 70 to 80 years ago than now...hmmm maybe

so the argument is that the relative racism of a given society determines what constitutes political fascism?

i don't think trying to keep jews out of the united states (a decision that i am well aware cost many jews their lives as they found themselves stranded in nazi europe) was a fascist decision. it was a racist decision. just like trying to keep muslims of the united states is not a fascist decision, it's a racist one. imho ymmv etc.

balls: pt is just that the policies trump advocates that get him called fascist were done by us when we were fighting fascism. it's kinda like when ppl call obama a socialist or communist; US introduced more socialist policies during the cold war (when there were legit full commie countries) than in the past 30 years and probably in the next 30 years.

however i agree with joan that

OTOH it's really fine to call him a fascist because calling assholes fascists is a time-honored tradition and we're not all fedora-sporting EXCUSE ME THAT'S NOT WHAT THE WORD MEANS bores

associating him w/ racism is probably a better tactic than associating him w/ fascism.

cause everyone knows what racism is, everyone (even republicans) accepts that it.is.bad. calling assholes fascists is such a time-honored tradition that the word fascist kinda just means asshole to a lot of people. whereas racist means racist.

my intro to the word fascist was when my ill-tempered spoiled nerd friend called his mom one for not driving him to a magic the gathering tournament when we were 11

it has a whiff of sputtering, imprecise anger

early in Obama's presidency it seemed like some people on fox news (and elsewhere) were having trouble deciding if he was a fascist or a socialist ha :/

Maybe they were running tests to see which word stimulated growling among their viewers more.

his mom is definitely more of a fascist than donald trump, she sounds like a true monster

it has a whiff of sputtering, imprecise anger

it's the fricative-sibilant combo, first you spit then you hiss

He's a racist (keep Muslims out) and a Fascist (lock down the internet, kick out the press). Plus, under Trump I doubt the trains would even run on time. He'd cut Amtrak money, because the free market has shown it doesn't work. Plus, only losers take public transportation.

everyone itt probably knows both the strict and loose definitions of the word fascist

Actually, no, I'm not that clear on what the strict definition is and the Vox article has not convinced me that there is one.

Or if there is, it does not seem like one that amounts to a very coherent ideology.

iirc, the strictest definition would be: a member of Mussolini's National Fascist party before it was outlawed.

Well, Trump is def not a fascist by that definition.

my intro to the word fascist was when my ill-tempered spoiled nerd friend called his mom one for not driving him to a magic the gathering tournament when we were 11

ill-tempered spoiled nerd friend otm, what has parenting come to

imagine if Hitler's mom had taken him to a magic the gathering tournament when he was 11.

Regarding Trump's racism (I understand that that's orthogonal to the thread topic), what he said about Latinos in his campaign announcement was essentialist racism. I don't care to quibble about Trump's "actual" beliefs about race; all we have is what he's said, and he seems all id to me anyway. It is true that he hasn't apotheosized racial struggle into an "ideology" the way Hitler did, but I think that claiming his statements about Latinos and Muslims are rationally grounded is wack.

i think what i was trying to say by [hamfistedly] contrasting a kind of reasonable racism of trump to an irrational mytho-poetic racism of hitler is to suggest that the way that the US treated european jewish immigrants in 1938 and the way hitler did were both 'racist' in that both essentialized ppl acc to their group racial identity but that only one, as you say, apotheosized racial struggle into an ideology. i see the former as existing in any number of political + social ideologies but the latter as being a phenomenon unique to fascism. i wasn't trying to claim that non-fascist racism (if you buy this distinction) is somehow actually rational or appropriate. just that it bears a different relationship to reality than fascist racial categories + mythos.

i think that this idea that trump isn't principled enough to be a fascist is maybe buying into a bit of a myth about fascism, that it was actually principled and not a presentation of the right ideology at the right time for what was a more important goal beyond any principle, the rise to power of a hierarchical faction. trump basically embodies this imo but the right ideology for the time in re: a rise to power is different right now in the US, it's .. whatever he does, macho grandstanding and reality tv cooing and an ADD-addled racism that will hate anyone it makes sense to hate in the moment. whether or not the bourgeois who backs him is large enough to make his rise happen is a measurement of how much of a fascist undercurrent there is in the culture right now. i guess my take is, why not make the word work for a contemporary reality that is just as real and full of unfulfilled potential as the reality was in germany during the 30s. i don't think it diminishes the word to make a connection where it's appropriate instead of walling it off in history.

v otm I think

i think that this idea that trump isn't principled enough to be a fascist is maybe buying into a bit of a myth about fascism, that it was actually principled and not a presentation of the right ideology at the right time for what was a more important goal beyond any principle, the rise to power of a hierarchical faction.

That's more or less where I was wondering. Do many political scholars actually regard fascism as a coherent ideology in the way that e.g. classical liberalism, democratic socialism, or Marxist-Leninism are coherent ideologies? Genuinely curious. Point 4 of that Vox article is basically an open admission that it had no real ideological position at all when it comes to the economy, which is sort of a huge aspect of how any society is governed. Point 1 mostly tells us what fascism is not. I followed the article to read Mussolini's The Doctrine of Fascism (written a decade after the March on Rome), which does give enough info to suggest that the term may well not be apt for Trump but also seems to basically acknowledge that the 'ideology' (or at least 'theory') fascism was largely made up on the go:

The years preceding the march on Rome cover a period during which the need of action forbade delay and careful doctrinal elaborations. Fighting was going on in the towns and villages. There were discussions but... there was some­thing more sacred and more important... death... Fascists knew how to die. A doctrine - fully elaborated, divided up into chapters and paragraphs with annotations, may have been lacking, but it was replaced by something far more decisive, - by a faith. All the same, if with the help of books, articles, resolutions passed at congresses, major and minor speeches, anyone should care to revive the memory of those days, he will find, provided he knows how to seek and select, that the doctrinal foundations were laid while the battle was still raging. Indeed, it was during those years that Fascist thought armed, refined itself, and proceeded ahead with its organization.

i really don't think nazi-style racial ideology is necessary to fascism. obsessive purgation of internal "weakness" incarnated by a scapegoat class is necessary, but as the class is always at least partly disguised (jews, communists, etc) it can really be anything at all, and is usually multiple things. (the symmetry of fascism w/ totalitarian communism is probably overstated, but the stalinist hunt for "wreckers" feels like a refinement on fascist othering: an invisible class that is literally sabotaging the state from within and which can be revealed to include literally anyone-- including of course jews, "left deviationists", etc.)

nazi racial theory is unique and the nazi state and hitler's head are clearly unimaginable without the specific spectre of the jew, but i don't think that the anti-semitism of italian fascism (before it became a nazi client ideology) is so completely inseparable from its anti-intellectualism, generalized racist xenophobia, macho paranoia, potency theory etc (all things of course tied up with anti-semitism in europe of that time and others) that the f-word should be off-limits when those exact things show up in another populist demagogue during a time of widening inequity and widespread popular disillusionment in the democracy he claims he will cure; and tho i can only guess, disorientatedly, w the help of various aids, as to the causes of those feelings at stokable levels in mass numbers of people, i don't think that mass mystical race-hate is the sole or even biggest one. even in germany-- it is clearly hitler-personally's prime motive, but i don't know if it is his prime source of power. (in general i think the psychology of leaders is less important than the psychology of peoples. so i.e.j0an's remark above--

a fascist, however wrongheadedly, believes he is doing good for his nation. Trump's pathology is messier.

--is likely true, but the people at the rallies believe trump is doing good for his nation and that they are doing good by supporting him. this matters more than trump's soul does imo. it particularly matters because trump will likely eventually go back to scamming people in more apolitical ways, but the people at the rallies will still be here.)

that the totalitarian states of midcentury europe are unique (like all states at all times) and should be remembered as such is obviously true; also obviously true is that people call anyone who tells them what to do a fascist. also true is that donald trump does not at this time command an organized paramilitary force which polices public ideology by applying violence to perceived sources of weakness or sedition and with which he might seize the state, so no, his movement is not today a fascist movement, but i think lots of people in his audiences have absolutely no personal compunction against applying violence to sources of weakness or sedition (like for example black people[*]) and are ready to do it, and i don't think we should wait until they start before we begin to remind people that the combination of populist xenophobia and contempt for the sclerosis of democracy amongst a population that fetishizes violence and domination and in an exciting new wrinkle happens to be awash in high-powered ego-inflating weaponry (and by the way compare mussolini's insight above--that the real fascist core has something to do with a sanctified relationship to death--not just to the suicide bomber, or to captain blicero, but to the friend i used to have whose opinion on gun control was "i can take the first two through the door"--but not, he knew, the rest) looks really dangerous in ways it would be irresponsible, not responsible, to downplay. i agree that we should not go around saying "you're just like HITLER!" every time someone tries to push people around but there is such a thing as a pattern and i think the only people who really benefit from locking a word as vague-from-birth as fascism in a museum are fascists.

[*] incidentally, despite all of our vaunted Advances, full-on phrenology-style objectivity-cloaked pseudoscientific race theory is just beneath the surface in this country, and the fragmentation of consensus reality isn't doing anything to bury it deeper

merry christmas

lol, it's a very good post though

that the totalitarian states of midcentury europe are unique (like all states at all times) and should be remembered as such is obviously true;

feel like probably the biggest differences in the ways states in general function now are moderated by mass media, at least in the rich white west. trump is an actual expert in that field, and i'm not sure if historical fascism -- however defined -- is a fertile strategy in this context, but i guess we'll see. paramilitary force seems like a good line to draw. otherwise you can end up equating hitler and stalin and so on, lose history.

is anyone in the world affirmatively identifying as capital f fascist right now?

biggest differences in the ways states in general function now are moderated by mass media

radio was used extensively by most western regimes as a propaganda tool in the 1930s, as were newsreels. these were legitimate mass media with an extensive reach.

i always thought that the third reich was agreed to be a mass media pioneer, though not even one of the first real movements to take advantage of it. c.f. triumph of the will. xp

with trump i think part of the reason maybe that his will be a losing coalition is that he's riding a somewhat diminished media wave that is already a bit of a relic? idk it feels like it's late in the day for mass media as an omnipresent influence on cultural discourse in america.

i guess what i mean is that trump seems like a pre-internet media creation, from a land of blonde daytime teevee, and the increased visibility of minorities post-internet seems to have shifted the conversation to the point where centers of power are being forced to do some reshuffling, and trump hits a formidable roadblock.

yes but it's late in the same sclerotic day. "social" media barely defined from effects vs previous "mass" in politics proper

right, that's a huge topic and i don't really have any good information on it obviously. i'm usually the first to agree that much has stayed the same regarding media effects after the internet, but i feel like there are some important changes that do really mess up or at least complicate the schematic for a figure like trump. what those are exactly i'm at a loss to say without trying to find research on it.

While traditional media clings to him like it would anything with a bit of juice, I'm not sure it's wise to underestimate the effect of being clearly the own candidate to be running his own Twitter, able to pick out nuggets of shite from his followers and rebroadcast them as well as his usual weakness-shaming.

lol, it's a very good post though

OTM

is anyone in the world affirmatively identifying as capital f fascist right now?

yes - largely people WAY out there on the fringe though

I actually had to research whether a band I wanted to review for The Wire this year was affiliated with the Order of Nine Angles. (They weren't; the review ran.)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-robocalls-white-nationalists-iowa

I really shouldn't lol, and yet... lol

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34573-it-was-like-a-fascist-rally-sikh-protester-ejected-from-trump-event-speaks-out

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-inspired-tale-bullets-pig-blood-article-1.2538283

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/23/donald-trump-on-protester-id-like-to-punch-him-in-the-face/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumppunch-755am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

yeah, i feel like the media has revealed its incapacity to deal with this guy

imagine if he told a similar anti-semitic parable along similar lines

if i were muslim in this country i'd feel like it was germany 1932

this is everywhere

http://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html

After reading Dave Neiwert's Orcinus blog for 13 years, I'm more watchful for and betting on Trump's candidacy stoking up proto-fascist movements, rather than straight fascist. I think dude can create the conditions where horseshit can foster, rather than being the standard-bearer himself

yup

Probably relevant: http://www.vox.com/2016/2/23/11099644/trump-support-authoritarianism

what happens to trump, after the election he probably doesn't win? is he fucked in the business world (or moreso than he ever was)? is his television career over? has he reached irredeemable levels of toxicity yet?

I doubt it. His toxicity has led to his name being taken off a number of major projects across the Middle East, like the golf course he is developing with DAMAC in Dubai, but afaict the underlying agreements remain in place.

He is probably not the worst human being major property developers are dealing with.

haha, yes that is very true

Most publically worst though - he may not be the only thing on the list of "We're hoping no-one finds out about this aspect of the deal", but why add something to that list?

Because they don't give a fuck? Different in the Middle East because Muslims.

He is probably not the worst human being major property developers are dealing with.

Yes, they're probably just as bad.

I can see his name being more of a disincentive in Europe than the Middle East, tbqh. The gist of DAMAC's statement was 'we don't condone his political comments but his company builds really good golf courses'. His face won't be plastered everywhere but in the grand scheme of things, people tend not to care too much about who owns the apartment blocs, golf courses and shopping malls they go to.

This is obviously tinfoil hat territory, but it's a little concerning to consider the damage that populist causes may be done by being associated with this huckster.

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2016/02/what-i-think-about-when-they-say-donald.html

https://www.facebook.com/drdaviddukeFANpage/posts/1026085247449055

"Of what are they afraid?"

The fuck u bringing me into this

feel like this thread is just a historical record/repository at this point
http://theweek.com/speedreads/609311/time-reporter-choked-slammed-ground-donald-trump-rally

For a minute, I thought that headline said that the guy was chokeslamed to the ground, and reading the description, it sure sounds like he was.

Watching the gif, it sure looks like he was.

Kind of cross-posting with the other thread but it's interesting to see how different manifestations of what might ultimately be the same thing are being viewed as uniquely national pathologies when they appear.

A very common explanation for the rise of Putin was that Russians are just naturally more comfortable under a Tsar-like figure who'll sort things out for them in return for giving up a vibrant civil society / grass-roots democratic engagement. Berlusconi is explained away by the Italian love of flash and machismo. PiS and Orban fit with Poland and Hungary's Catholic revanchism and latent willingness to believe antisemitic and anticommunist conspiracy theories, etc, etc. There's a risk that viewing Trump primarily through a prism of threatened American masculinity / 'whiteness' is falling into the same trap. There's a grain of truth in all of it but the commonalities (primarily a general, international lack of faith in conventional Western capitalism and democracy to deliver anything other than managed decline) are more important and have more worrying implications for the rise of an international hard-right.

yes, i think this is why some of the recent work on authoritarianism is convincing, since it doesn't rely on a narrative that's exclusively american.

Chris Hedges:

Fascism is aided and advanced by the apathy of those who are tired of being conned and lied to by a bankrupt liberal establishment, whose only reason to vote for a politician or support a political party is to elect the least worst. This, for many voters, is the best Clinton can offer....

Fascism is about an inspired and seemingly strong leader who promises moral renewal, new glory and revenge. It is about the replacement of rational debate with sensual experience. This is why the lies, half-truths and fabrications by Trump have no impact on his followers. Fascists transform politics, as philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin pointed out, into aesthetics. And the ultimate aesthetic for the fascist, Benjamin said, is war.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_revenge_of_the_lower_classes_and_the_rise_of_american_fascism_20160302

Rorty quote is remarkably prescient

I'm starting to rethink my engagement with pop culture at large, since the rise of Trump. The stupidness of so much of it is beginning to a look more sinister? nihilistic? than it used to. Or maybe just plane dum

hedges' book american fascism is where i first read that umberto eco piece that's been making the rounds again lately. i used to recommend the book just for the eco piece.

The stupidness of so much of it is beginning to a look more sinister? nihilistic? than it used to. Or maybe just plane dum

welcome to adulthood

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/06/donald_trump_vows_to_legalize_torture.html

There was a time when signing on to the Geneva Conventions was considered wise, to ensure that one's own citizen-soldiers, when captured, would not be subjected to inhuman treatment,and would not be exposed in combat to weapons such as nerve gas. Welcome to the brilliant era of the all-volunteer armed forces!

Slacktivist:
The national ID card and the Mark of the Beast

...Here, I think, the “authoritarianism” model isn’t quite as useful or explanatory as the idea of Herrenvolk. That’s a German word for something that found its nastiest and most infamous expression in 20th-century Germany. Herrenvolk means, literally, “master folk.” The idea is that of democratic government — but only by and for the ethnic majority (or, in places like Apartheid South Africa or the West Bank or parts of Mississippi, for the privileged ethnic minority).

This is helpful for trying to understand the appeal of people like Donald Trump or Alex Jones. Herrenvolk democrats are not opposed to “Big Government” in the form of welfare and assistance for themselves, but they’re fiercely opposed to any such assistance going to others — to the wrong kind of people. They want “Big Government” under their own feet, solidifying the foundations of their own lives, but they hate the idea of government offering the same support to those other kinds of people.

For the other form of “Big Government” — the kind that rests on one’s shoulders rather than under one’s feet, the kind that weighs us down rather than bearing our weight — Herrenvolk democrats take the opposite view. They insist on the Bill of Rights and full civil liberties for themselves, but not for others. They do not want government surveilling them, or hassling them for identification, but they want to see the government increasing its surveillance, harassment, stopping-and-frisking, etc., of those other people. They hate the idea of former NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s soda tax applying to them — that’s Big Brother and the nanny state. But at the same time they enthusiastically support efforts to police the grocery budgets of poor people.

Sounds familiar.

so how's everybody doing

http://www.cpbj.com/article/20160311/CPBJ01/160319967&source=RSS

Parliamentary cretins who consider themselves connoisseurs of the people like to repeat: "One must not frighten the middle classes with revolution. They do not like extremes." In this general form this affirmation is absolutely false. Naturally, the petty proprietor prefers order so long as business is going well and so long as he hopes that tomorrow it will go better.

But when this hope is lost, he is easily enraged and is ready to give himself over to the most extreme measures.

I don't remember Sutherland saying that

blu-ray extras

The truth is on your side, bubba

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/trump-coughlin-nazis-christian-front-kristallnacht-antisemitism-kasich-fascism/
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/donald_trump_s_terrifying_and_distinctly_american_authoritarianism.html

both about this idea of "american fascism"

jacobin piece otm. slate piece otm on and off:

He is not consumed with historical grievances; he’s not an anti-Semite; he hasn’t tried to build a mass party; and he doesn’t demand the restoration of tradition or an old moral order. Indeed, as a reality TV star and cyberbully on his third wife, he is himself a good illustration of the breakdown of any moral order possibly remaining.

bolded part is untrue: listen more carefully to his praise of supporters' thuggery. he loves invoking "the good old days". there is absolutely a moral order to which he longs, or enables a longing, to return. it's not very old.

the idea that trump's personal sleaziness is in irreconcilable contradiction with fascist purity -- or that his supporters are too dumb to see the gap -- is also wrong. over and over again you read supporter quotes along the lines of "he's pretty outrageous, but he's what we need" or "he might be sleazy, but he's what we need" or "sometimes i cringe, but he's what we need". the pertinent part here is "he's what we need". similarly, the absence of any serious policy prescriptions at all is neither a weakness nor a distinction from fascism. strength, order, mercilessness, and unashamed racism are themselves policy prescriptions. they are much more exciting, even more plausible, than "my health care plan" or "my tax plan". this question from the jacobin piece is (knowingly) the wrong question:

Trump has tapped into this anger and sense of powerlessness brilliantly. But is Trump a fascist whose real politics are being revealed drip by drip? Perhaps.

fascism has no "real politics" save 1) the attainment of supreme power via the direction of cathartic popular violence toward wicked and subversive classes and 2) the destruction first of any organization and then of any ideological system that opposes this power. slate:

When it comes to policies, he actually has none in the conventional sense. The conflict in the 2016 campaign is no longer Trump versus his Republican opponents; it is now Trump versus the American political system.

this is correct.

he doesn’t demand the restoration of tradition or an old moral order

dlh otm. I'm surprised a writer could sincerely believe that statement. I mean, Trump's signature slogan is "Make America Great Again"!

also aimless is correct to remind us in the other thread that as things currently stand, whoever walks into the oval office in january will instantly be in control of a vast and extralegal surveillance and targeted-death apparatus that has absolutely nothing even approaching a precedent in the midcentury totalitarian states. when people say, oh trump has no policies, trump doesn't want to be president, trump will betray his supporters, i want to shake them and ask them what they think a man with so few apparent interests besides power, and so many supporters unwilling to discern between protesters and ISIS, will do with this apparatus.

(i shouldn't concentrate on worries about president trump tho, because i still have no idea how this guy or anyone following him gets elected in a country with this many people in it who aren't white. what we're really in for is just some years of v ugly and dangerous politics.)

I'm not trying to deflect or to be clever but this was the case in January 2009 and why a man as intelligent as Barack Hussein Obama gave me the willies. And he's proven to be the perfect sociopath.

sorry, obama is sociopathic?

I don't think it's sociopathy as much as the immoral logic of power. Ends will always seek means, and the felt urgency of reaching those ends will (almost) always override the much more remote imperatives of ethics or morality. The very fact that such means (NSA surveillance, drones) exist ensures they will be used. It is an axiom of power.

Ends will always seek means, and the felt urgency of reaching those ends will (almost) always override the much more remote imperatives of ethics or morality.

Obama could almost have stood to do more of this, but this is a completely bizarre characterisation of someone who spent so much of his term tying his own hands behind his back in the search for bipartisanship.

I'm not defending any POTUS in particular, but I honestly don't know how anyone still believes that it's possible to skate through the presidency morally unscathed.

sorry, obama is sociopathic?

― akm, Monday, March 14, 2016 12:05 AM

Yes.

I'm not sure how you can sign an order requiring a drone to vaporize an American citizen and his son and go downstairs to Michelle and the girls and watch "Modern Family" and not exhibit sociopathy. I guess guidance counselors would call it "compartmentalizing."

Protip: If someone is running for president, they are probably a sociopath.

yep

yall need to hang out with real sociopaths more

but I follow Obama on Twitter.

what's the diagnosis for vaporizing foreigners?

If being a sociopath means being willing to authorize someone's death, then all presidents have been and will be sociopaths, since that's part of the job description.

Almost as if they commanded an army or something

i share most ppl's discomfort with the idea of drones but i think it's unfair to suggest that obama's just using them because they exist; he's responding to the continued existence of al-qaeda and related groups. you can argue that the negatives of using drones outweigh the benefits or that we shouldn't do anything that kills civilians no matter what or that the killings are creating more terrorists than they get rid of (all of which are good points), but if any leader responsible for signing orders that kill ppl is a sociopath then lincoln and FDR are presumably right down there with obama.

surely this belongs in the what is sociopathy and is barack obama a sociopath thread, which i am not making up

I think so. It's a description, not criticism.

sxpost

http://i.imgur.com/pIdOAV3.jpg

Aslan!

i don't think obama is a sociopath any more than i am a sociopath for using an iphone created with lithium strip mined from bolivia. everyone compartmentalizes.

you should've seen how I tore into my bag of organic sweet potato chips over lunch today!

Curious if any of you read the NYT Sunday Mag piece on an Arizona Trump rally, which had a near-transcript of a stump fiction he tells ("The Bullet," NYT author called it), about General Pershing executing Muslims in the Philippines with bullets soaked in pig guts. Had a very fascist demagogue vibe, even for DT.

Thread of What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/04/19/trumps-putin-fantasy/
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/19/donald_trumps_avenging_angels_how_the_orange_haired_monster_has_rewritten_the_history_of_american_conservatism/

my intro to the word fascist was when my ill-tempered spoiled nerd friend called his mom one for not driving him to a magic the gathering tournament when we were 11

― flopson, Thursday, 24 December 2015 16:45 (3 months ago)

http://i.imgur.com/mfoTccj.jpg

for a second i read that where the infowars repost was going to end up being about the results of an M:TG tournament

flopson that is the greatest thing

There he goes! To the center!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87yzwq7X8yE

Astounding 2011 Prophecy!!! 'Donald Trump Chosen to Lead America'

"Some pious people say casino owner Donald Trump is not a godly man. Should we, however, ask: Is Donald Trump God’s man? Retired firefighter Mark Taylor claims the Lord has chosen Mr. Trump to pull America back from the cliff. Rick Wiles interviews Mark about his amazing 2011 prophecy that Donald Trump has been marked by God to lead America."

http://i.imgur.com/nv4C4QH.jpg

I thought this had to be satire, but a part of me wanted it to be real, so I checked out the guy's description for his Youtube channel:

http://i.imgur.com/UqrEXr3.jpg

If these people are part of Trump's coalition, I sure as hell hope he doesn't win. I don't want to know what an emboldened version of this guy looks like.

That video is amazing. And the comments are even better.

Mussolini never had a pen

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/731882367493808128

With a speech balloon from Tiny Elvis, apparently

Greil Marcus, on whether DT is a fascist:

I think it’s less a matter of policy—though mass deportations would require suspension or abrogation of civil liberties and the affirmation of or acquiescence to rule by decree—than the encouragement of violence by supporters against opponents that suggests an acting out of Mussolinism. On a national scale with executive resources that would be fascist. Read Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, but remember that Sanders supporters have lately tapped into the same strain and their candidate has responded with a condemnation of violence that translates as “Go for it.”

https://greilmarcus.net/ask-greil/

idiot

Marcus with the moral equivalency.

so fascism is a latent impulse w/in the populace that can be evoked and actualized by authoritarian leaders (and would-be leaders) w/ who frame nationalism as a narrative of heroic redemption in a moment of terrible crisis.* so the trump question need only be, "is he an enabler?" does he give his supporters an opportunity to express the fascist impulse?

* as of this post, i mean

I wonder if this question hinges on whether you take fascism to be a distinctive political (even "rational") ideology or more like an ever present human instinct to be kept in check through civilization, sublimation, etc.

I feel like the whole 'GET 'EM OUTTA HERE' aspect of trump rallies is totally fascist. I hadn't seen it in a long time but I got to see it today during his carny barking tour stop in Anaheim.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/714189569793646597

the "i alone" thing is pretty fascist. also the fact that his platform is always changing, which means the campaign is about voters placing their faith in him rather than concrete proposals.

his very clownishness evinces a disdain for parliamentary procedure.

Third question itt is what does it matter
Fourth might be should usa ilx be so fixated on possible fascist d trump
Fifth prob could be could my hands be doing something less wringy and more beneficial like making a nice sandwich or playing the lute or holding the pages of a fine book or hitching a ride to a carefree place in which i could more productively and less frettishly pass the interminable fucking delay between this sorry shitheap of a process and actually casting my vote

This site is dying for want of a less stupid topic tbh

Sad!

:-(

I am appealing to u wonderful, intelligent and capable people to just not do this anymore

"topics are stupid, site dying, i alone can solve"

I wish that last were true, but im clearly begging for a community effort here

i agree with deems, actually, but i still feel drawn to worrying about stuff i can't control.

We'll have to get you all into watching the euros

can i recommend https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=brexit&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=when+is+the+brexit coming up v soon

u don't have to read the bad thread, deems

do you play much lute deems?

lol @ liberal voice of complacency

This may have already been covered but I think that fascism is generally defined more by what it's against than what it's for. Hitler, Franco and Mussolini were all about making their countries great again by being anti-capitalist, anti-Marxist and anti-all the minority groups. Trump seems to be going down this path by being against big corporations, the government and immigrants but being rather vague about how exactly he would achieve his goals

Then again maybe I'm just one of those European liberals who's all like 'look at this right wing American nut! He's just like Hitler!' I don't know

Mussolini, get it right.

@tinyrevolution
Most dictators need 20 years of absolute power to reach the level of hateful paranoid insanity that Trump is starting with

https://storify.com/case_face/a-trump-rally-in-greensboro-anger-in-here-is-palpa

Crowd won't clap for call for unity with LGBTQ

Bragging that he took credentials from WA Post. Crowd yells Kill them all.

Trump comparing immigrants to snakes

Crowd calls for Berghdal to be shot, hung

Confederate flags everywhere

Telling myself they're angry about the economy. About changing technology and industry. But there's so much base-level ugliness.

TLDR: he's a fascist

hi, am!

this is how nazi germany sharted

Has not convincingly indicated he believes in anything but the greater glory of himself.

Not provably a fascist, we'd have to see how he "governs." I'd prefer not to know.

I ran the how does it walk how does it quack test, and yeah he's a fascist

can a duck do the goosestep?

racist yes, fascist incomplete

suggest adopting working hypothesis

altamont reenactors

That rally livetweet is fucking chilling. Trump is just rubbing shit and dumpster juice into an already-festering boil on the ass of America. I can do without seeing the Mad Max-ification of this country in my lifetime.

dude is so explicitly a garden-variety fascist I'm a little mystified that we're still in disagreement. not all fascists have a coherent fascist ideology; there isn't any Soviet-style purity test for fascism. Trump's fascism is natural to his way of thinking: his ideas (a leader gets to respond to the mean old press as he sees fit; people should have to submit to whatever a leader thinks is good and right before they can do as they like in the country that leader runs) are instinctively fascistic

I don't get it either. I find the Cro-Magnons who support Trump vile but I at least get the vile place they're coming from. I totally don't get anyone who's still on the fence about Trump and doesn't see the legitimacy his presumptive nomination has gained him as a serious threat to civil society.

That rally livetweet is fucking chilling.

unbelievably so! i made the mistake of watching the youtube of that event out of curiosity this morning and i've been depressed ever since.

Barring some cataclysmic event that shifts public opinion in his favor, I don't think he has a chance of winning the election, but that's almost beside the point since he's done such a fantastic job of drawing the morlocks out of their holes and giving them a figure to organize around. We're going to be wistfully reflecting on those halcyon days when the quaint Tea Partiers were the right wing fringe.

Trump in Atlanta today. The rally will take place at the Fox Theatre, essentially right on the edge of Midtown's gay district.

When this discussion comes up I do always recommend paxtons anatomy of fascism. And one of his main conclusions is not to judge fascists by what they claim, but how they act. That makes it hard to tell about aspiring fascists, of course.

That is, there is no coherent fascist ideology. Which is kind of the point.

that ok that gays love him he has the best gays xxp

I am not mystified in the least that we are in disagreement about philosophical categorization, but I am *so* not saying why.

Not having been a polisci student in 30+ years, i'll take your word that fascists don't need a coherent ideology, but that suggests maybe several hundred people in US politics might be as fittingly labeled? My local fave would be Giuliani, even tho he has mercifully failed at being elected to anything since 1997.

I think a fascist is kind of necessarily a nationalist. like you can have fascist-sympathizing mayors but like...if I'm a fascist in my house, that's a pretty weak fascism, fascism is nationalistic in character

like you can have fascist-sympathizing mayors but like...if I'm a fascist in my house, that's a pretty weak fascism, fascism is nationalistic in character

― The bald Phil Collins impersonator cash grab (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi)

otm. that's the extent i would place some kind of "purity test" on so-called fascism. it builds a pyre of vainglorious nationalism, defines itself in opposition to specific threat groups supposedly responsible for the national fall, and tends to assume an absurdly triumphal (and at least implicitly violent) character.

Trump currently talking about how horrific it is that Germany is being overrun by non-Germans

question answered, lock thread

You have to be fucking kidding me.

tbf he didn't say "non-Germans" but that was what he seemed to be implying

@tinyrevolution
I kind of admire Trump's determination not to change as the nominee and to stay the same narcissistic fantasist bigot he's always been

i have obviously known about trump as a persona for a long time but seriously was there ever any indication prior to the past several years that he was like this? he always seemed like a complete dick of course, but not this level of dick.

i'm sure "The Apprentice" had an editor.

There was a documentary made about what a dick he is.

the birtherism seems like an early indicator xxp

... maybe even two of them? (xp)

Trump just said "We are having the blood sucked out of our country."

he's also never had a platform of this size and reach and duration that allowed him to do anything but promote his (literal and figurative) brand. which basically amounted to selling shit, including himself, and given that he needed partners (macy's to sell his shitty ties, broadcast tv to sell his shitty show), i have to imagine he was canny enough to know to keep the demagoguery in his back pocket until his moment arrived.

that theory of course hinges on how much you believe that he really believes any of his horseshit and this whole horror hasn't just been a sociopathic racheting-up of the "selling his personal brand" trump.

lol are we still on this "what does he REALLY believe" nonsense

his dad was arrested at a KKK rally, there's the NYT jogger-rape case ad etc. Dude's always been a racist crackpot buffoon, he just has a bigger megaphone now.

oh i don't doubt he believes it.

yeah i was curious because i didn't pay him much attention until recent years, my thought of him was always as a particular kind of NYC type of tycoon buffoon and a relic of the '80s with a reality show, like a vulgar lee iacocca and nothing more. i don't doubt he believes what he says. yeah mordy my first indication that he was more than just a dick was the secret muslim bullshit.

more that if his campaign had flamed out in the early stages he might have just gone back to shilling shit, and all of this bilge might have remained a little more...bottled up.

I'm inclined to think that Trump doesn't have 'beliefs' as we understand them, inasmuch as his excessive credulity and his vampiric relation to positive regard and his undiluted narcissism seem to hamper his strict adherence to any particular ethos. And I think that's instructive in terms of what kind of a president he would be (particularly inasmuch as he would likely fall under the spell of anyone canny enough to both worm their way into an advisory position and push their own agenda through strategic employment of the ego stroke). But the existence of a belief system is also completely immaterial in terms of the real-world impact of his words and actions.

I'm not sure you can be a successful fascist authoritarian with any real moral/belief system. It's almost primitive in its simplicity: what do I need/want done, and how do I do it as quickly as possible? The answer to the latter is almost always power/force.

Yeah, the ontological void within that orange-hued corpus is the only real argument against Trump as a garden variety fascist. I've never thought that he intended to do much more with the presidency than use it as money-making leverage.

Stalin was a similar void, albeit a much more skilled one

the central-park jogger thing was the first major indication of the scale of trump's assholery, the birther stuff confirmed it

of course he first appeared in the NYT for being the target (w/ his dad) of a race-discrimination suit brought by the city housing authority IIRC, so basically as long as he's been in public life, he's been known as a shitbag.

i do think trump is mostly an amoral opportunist and narcissist, but if he has core "beliefs" they have a lot to do with racism.

Amateurist otm. He's not an "ideological void." He's a fucking racist.

also stalin wasn't an ideological void either - he was a leninist

hat rally livetweet is fucking chilling.

unbelievably so! i made the mistake of watching the youtube of that event out of curiosity this morning and i've been depressed ever since.

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Wednesday, June 15, 2016 9:52 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just awful, i'm genuinely terrified of the shit that is gonna happen in cleveland this summer

this is so bad

i can't tell if trump's rhetoric is going to incite something terrible upon someone in the opposition or upon himself but i get an increasingly bad feeling about all this.

yeah i really worry about the new levels of hatred he's legitimizing and inflaming... esp. since we know he will throw more and more epic fits as he realizes he's not going to win (and even worse once he loses). every time he says that obama is a traitorous foreign agent, etc., that seems to make an attempted assassination or an oklahoma-city-bombing type thing more and more likely.

I re-read They Thought They Were Free last week and managed to work myself up into a pretty good depression. Relevant part: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

...

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

i really think a GOP civil war may yet occur next month, but the main obstacle to a fight to take the nomination from Trump may be fear that his supporters would assassinate the traitors.

no one is going to do anything about trump. it's likely the grease fire won't burn down the neighborhood but the gop isn't going to put it out and we're all going to have to wait and see.

I like to think that even if he somehow won, he'd be so neutered by the machinations of govt that nothing much would happen and he'd look like a useless blowhard. Which has its own problems in making the US look pathetic on the world stage, but... eh.

i think looking pathetic is the greatest good possible for all, but not via that means

I like to think that even if he somehow won, he'd be so neutered by the machinations of govt that nothing much would happen and he'd look like a useless blowhard. Which has its own problems in making the US look pathetic on the world stage, but... eh.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, June 15, 2016 10:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this has been how i sleep at night --- i just dont think he'll have the political capital in washington to actually be able to do anything substantial, policy-wise

Wouldn't he, though? There are all kinds of things he could do without the blessing of congress, executive orders and the like that would be at the least disruptive and at worst massively destructive. The question really is how far congress would let him go before stepping in and stopping him.

Lot of grassy knolls out there.

Trump legitimises hatred. a Trump rally is like a 'safe-space' for bigots to say and do what they want, and even when Trump is mocking protestors saying things like 'take him home to Mommmy', it opens up a jokey, accessible door to all kinds of other hate-speech for his followers. It's fascism, but with cheap laughs instead of seig heils; an evil, grinning clownface.

a clown nose honking on a human face forever

happy 1 year everybody

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Panic_in_year_zero_1962_poster.jpg

Fascism emerges from perceived systemic failure. It's the expression of people who feel there is a crisis, or a decline, and the state will not or cannot respond. It wants someone who can cut through the red tape and 'get the job done'. As such it eschew creeds and positions, being always willing to violate such things to do what is necessary. It's easy to see how the idea of 'political correctness' plays into this - the idea that the state is refusing to aid you during a crisis because of principles you don't share. So a leader promises to run things like a general, like a king, like a CEO. He understands your problems ('he says what we're all thinking') and more than that he has disdain for the structures that prevent a solution. Telling trump that his plan to stop immigration from Muslims is unconstitutional is confirming the point. They don't think the constitution says that, it's for them, and state structures that prevent necessary action have to be circumvented. It's the politics of the emergency state, especially when there is no emergency, when the state list a to people who at Not You while your problems are ignored.

List a = listens. I can't wait til I have a place to live again and I don't have to type stuff on a phone in the pub.

(I remember that lots of fascist ideologues rejected the idea of a statement of values, or a party programme, of a manifesto. But it's been a while since I sturdier that, and now it's just a vague assertion on my part)

@maggieNYT
"Everntually, it's not going to survive, just so you understand," Trump says of the United States.

Don otm

Yeah, cool, so let's elect President Kevorkian.

http://thebaffler.com/salvos/pity-o-god-republican-faludi

Jesus, I had no idea what's been going on in Hungary. The fuck is happening to this world

@BruceBartlett
In 1999 Trump said of his now strong supporter Pat Buchanan, he "has enjoyed a long psychic friendship with Hitler."

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/31/opinion/op-28208

Faludi article of special interest to me as a Jew married to a Hungarian, things over there are definitely sad-making. Have always talked about taking our kids to visit but man, not any time soon it sounds like.

shakey did i ever tell u about my friend i went to yeshiva w/ whose grandfather was a hungarian language poet and one of the 1,700 jews that kastner arranged w/ the nazis to escape the country? if you haven't already read it, there's a v provocative book on the topic that iirc is super readable (and is about hannah senesh as well), you might want to check out called Perfidy by Ben Hecht. it used to be impossible to find (after a couple years of looking i finally located a copy in the crown heights tzivos hashem bookstore lol) but now it looks like amazon has a bunch of copies including for the kindle.

oh, great. the austrian courts have decided to give the fascists another shot at the presidency.

i have no idea why i bother sobering up.

sounds interesting mordy! will see if the library has it

x-post

'cause the mainstream Austrian parties are fucking clowns too busy tripping over themselves to prove their hatred for foreigners and doing favors for their friends at the tabloids to run an election properly. The Austrian Court decision was good, what could come out of it is very, very bad indeed -- and rightwing English-speaking ratfuckers are already at work convincing the Angry Fascist Voter that the court decision was based on widespread fraud, which is simply a lie -- the court was clear that absolutely no evidence of voting fraud was presented, even by the FPÖ who brought the case.

the mainstream Austrian parties are fucking clowns too busy tripping over themselves to prove their hatred for foreigners and doing favors for their friends at the tabloids to run an election properly.

Sounds familiar.

Yup.

Is there some better dictator to use as an analogue for Trump than Hitler? I have a feeling there is but my historical knowledge of dictators is limited in depth.

Successful dictators are more competent than Trump. But I have to say his proclaiming "I am your voice" was a particularly fascist way to phrase that sentiment.

Trumpolini
About 7,720 results (0.59 seconds)

TPM had suggested Mussolini back during the early primaries. It was pretty well argued imo: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/know-your-fascists-dictators

Also it was a Mussolini quotes account that Gawker successfully got Trump to RT.

Yeah, I mean he seems a little too bumbling and lacking in a coherent plan to be a Hitler. He operates by instinct.

not sure there is someone who trump imitates exactly but a lot of his corporatist gov't talk kind of reminds me of italian fascist corporatism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascist_corporatism

Mussolini is the closest analogue

Similar stupid macho peacockery.

how bad do we think this is going to be? (if he wins -- which he could)

today i argued with someone that he was qualitatively different than bush because he draws rhetoric and talking points from the conspiratorial far right. other times i think his presidency would mostly seem like a joke. there are already too many deportations under obama and it's not clear how much trump would be able to accelerate that program. maybe all that will happen is that the republican party will try to implement some version of his trade platform, but watered down to an extent that it wouldn't be so bad. maybe he will instinctually stay out of war because it wouldn't put "america first." and maybe elon musk will discover an elixir of immortality, allowing the supreme court to remain unchanged.

like i can imagine him as president but i can't really imagine how he would govern. like, with the crime shit he kept bringing up last night, what could he do about that as president? what would a "law and order" presidency look like in america? does he even aspire to do anything or is this just for attention? (the interview with his ghostwriter seemed to indicate "attention" is the only thing he truly craves)

you should go hang out with hoos for a while

No, Treeship, if he wins, then the debt rating of the USA would immediately drop, the value of the dollar would plunge, we would have to find a way to immediately re-assure our treaty partners, our trade agreements would be in question, and every other aspiring superpower would start encroaching in whichever direction they felt like. The day after his election would make Brexit look like a dinkleberry. And instead of having two years to figure out how to deal before it really takes effect, the world would have two and half months. It would be a disaster for global stability. His inauguration could quite conceivably take place while a war is breaking out and a depression is settling in.

^ realistic assessment.

It honestly has nothing to do with what he actually does or what Congress tries to do around him. It has everything to do with the fact that he is a known liar and promise breaker who does not understand or believe in any of our institutions and cannot be relied upon by other states to heed promises that our country has made, like paying bills on time, or sending aid when allies are threatened.

Also him getting elected would be a terrifying endorsement/validation/legitimation of a number of loathsome and terrifying views, which will likely have very serious material consequences even if he were unable to get any legislation passed or enact anything from the Oval Office.

it seems like his presidency would immediately consist of a bunch of legal battles about his insane executive orders, followed by his terrifying threats to somehow work around the judicial system

The real question is, does our system of government have enough checks and balances in place in order to prevent him from doing anything really catastrophic? Hell they've been able to prevent Obama from accomplishing a whole lot and his ideas were downright reasonable.

(of course, a Trump presidency is terrible in a million other ways, and Tomboto's claim that the debt rating would drop is almost certainly true, which would be a disaster)

If anything could stir bipartisanship in congress, it would be uniting to impeach Trump over something he does (take your pick!) within his first 9 months in office.

on day 1 trump will sign an executive order demanding that the credit rating increase

xp to me = Ted Cruz and his goons would lead the charge, and every person with a (D) behind their name would sign on.

Like for me the biggest disconnect is that the POTUS may be the most criticized person on the planet (whoever it is) and there are hundreds of examples of Trump being unable to take any criticism whatsoever

He's Putin with ridiculous hair.

Ted Cruz doesn't really have goons, but I can see Paul Ryan taking that role.

ted cruz is his own goon

Goos thoughts tombot. Makes sense that Putin would try to undermine the democrats via hacking/wikileaks

tom otm basically which i think will become clearer and become a lot of hill strategy as we go into the fall

For the sort of voter who finds Trump palatable, the idea of our debt rating being downgraded would be so remote from their concerns that Trump could simply flip it and make it a point of pride that the USA is the best and most powerful country in the world and can thumb its nose at debt ratings. Kind of like with Brexit voters.

idk, some voters are probably just voting for him bc he is a republican.

i talk to people who don't recognize trump's uniqueness

people who don't recognize Trump's uniqueness are not going to recognize the importance of debt ratings either

I'm still blown away by the absolute ignorance required to vote Trump. Either you'd really have to have no idea how the world, let alone America, works, or you'd have to completely not care, and with every interview of a Trump voter I hear, it sounds like a scary combination of these two things. Factor in Trump's near complete lack of details to date - he'll make America great/strong/rich though sheer force of will, it seems - and it's like watching people ride the world's biggest escalator to nowhere.
https://mollylauterbach.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ic6gn6e0tapnh.gif

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-nato-we-have-to-walk

Is this shit for real? Was he actually referring specifically to NATO when he said they don't pay us enough?

he wants to run the US military like the mafia. we will protect their allies..... if they pay up

wtf is he even talking about?

oh, i guess this stuff: http://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-calls-for-rise-in-defence-spending-by-alliance-members-1434978193

lol:

Jonah Goldberg Retweeted
Garry Kasparov
✔
@Kasparov63

Bernie Sanders lost, but it’s a serious worry for America that he will have more capable followers & that Socialism is being normalized.
3m

you might just say we are all "pawns" to him, right Garry?

eff garry kasparov

eff chess

maybe it's time for Mr Kasparov to check...
...
...
...
...
his privilege

Socialism is pretty normalized in every western European country, Garry. So your worrying need to broaden considerably. I suggest moving to a 20-hour day of worrying to make up for lost time.

man alive A+/gold star/nobel prize

Kasparov is genuinely bonkers and appears to believe in the Phantom Time Hypothethis iirc.

lkjjklgfdlk;jklcvfblvn.m,v .m,kl;mklnsdm,vxcmnvxljkjkllkjljkljjjkljkl

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/trumps-intellectuals/492752/

Have America’s leaders really “abandoned the basic principles of constitutional governance”? Masugi directs readers desiring amplification to something called the “Journal of American Greatness.” Noonan does too. She calls the journal “a sophisticated, rather brilliant and anonymous website that is using this Trumpian moment to break out of the enforced conservative orthodoxy of the past 15 years.”

That’s one way of describing it. During its four months of life, the “Journal of American Greatness”—which featured a collection of writers with classical pseudonyms and an affinity for the German American political theorist Leo Strauss—made a highbrow case for overthrowing America’s existing political order and replacing it with the raw, dynamic, intoxicating energy of Donald Trump. The journal shuttered itself in June after some of its contributors grew worried that their identities would be exposed. But the conservative author Steven Hayward, who knows several of its authors, predicts that they will continue publishing in other venues. Already, he says, they have received several offers for book contracts.

The “Journal of American Greatness” makes explicit what Noonan, Hanson, and Gingrich imply: that America’s current system of government is illegitimate. One article declares, “The digits of one hand suffice to count all of the truly committed defenders of American sovereignty, liberty, and nationhood in Congress.” A second asserts that the United States is “post-Constitutional.” A third accuses Washington conservatives of a “decadence so deep that it would take some Oliver Cromwell to puncture.”

Sounds v dark enlightenment

*rolls eyes* strauss luvrs *makes jerkoff motion*

Trump proves how useless Language is.

it's a virus i hear

I appreciate the sentiment, but Trump's single example cannot prove such a generality.

idk man I don't think proof matters very much when language is useless

especially sentences

trump never forms recognizable sentences, which right there tends to reduce the usefulness of his Language imo

Nothing is real, everything is permitted, man

I abide by the laws of physics.

Sure, the ones you know about

Trump is perfectly fluent in the contemporary language of images, which matters to a certain number of likely voters, though I guess we'll have to wait until after the first debate to see exactly how much it matters to how many

every day since reading it over the summer, I feel more deeply the truth of Vilem Flusser's pessimistic 1987 work, Does Writing Have A Future?

btw you heard it here first: Trump will resoundingly lose the debate among people who actually watch it, but will eke out a narrow victory in the polls overall once the shitty memes and lies start circulating (and really, any sign of life from the candidate or his campaign will suffice to meet the historically low expectations they face coming in to the event)

MIchiko Kakutani found a loophole in godwin's law: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/books/hitler-ascent-volker-ullrich.html

Donald Trump is not a Fascist, a truth so obvious as to be worth the clusterfuck that's about to ensue
― Coombesbat 18 (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 23, 2015 1:42 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not over yet of course but idk if it was worth it

i thought that hitler book review was hysterical and pretty blatant

yeah it's pretty on the nose

just gon' leave this here

http://gothamist.com/2016/10/11/talking_trump_zoltar_machine.php#photo-1

http://www.esquire.com/spy/

Spy returns, sort of.

Spy is owned by Hearst Corporation. A Part of Hearst Digital Media. I say fuck 'em.

Gopnik: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/why-trump-is-different-and-must-be-repelled

His is the ideology not of democratic patriotism but of a narrow nationalism alone—the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. He will “level the playing field” with the terrorist spectre of isis by forcing soldiers to commit war crimes; he will not merely kill our enemies but annihilate their families. His platform is resentment and his program is revenge, and that is an ideology with many faces and one name. This is fascism with an American face.

got to admit it's scary to think the US would ever commit war crimes in the name of vengeance

What, like bush jr invading iraq because they were rude to his dad?

oof you missed that's adam's default mode of discourse is obvious trenchant sarcasm

"violence promised to its enemies" oh well come on now, this will not stand! that's not like the US at all!

worse yere getting folks

i ran the movie do not resist last night (for an audience of ~4 people, doesn't get the blood up like GMOs i guess) and tho there wasn't a single mention of trump (was prob all shot before he declared) watching it this weekend made it clear what the bloc of law enforcement that's for fascism in the ferguson era looks+thinks like -- lots of talk of delusional cop-haters who don't understand that the only thing that keeps them alive in a howling void of evil and violence is law enforcement, and specifically law enforcement's capacity to inflict violence -- and then all of a sudden james comey showed up and said every night he lied to his little girl, because his little girl thought there were monsters under her bed, and he lied, and he told her monsters aren't real

good luck us!

the monsters aren't hiding under the bed, they're kissing her goodnight :/ </trenchant>

national trenchant week

ran the above movie again tonight to another small and radically quiet audience, F5ing the returns in the booth alone. so these guys have the executive, the legislature, and the security services, huh.

this is extremely good imo

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-supermanagerial-reich/#!

pretty good read, thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yh0jAxOxGE

pretty good read, thanks

― El Tomboto, Friday, November 18, 2016 2:22 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the lovely latebloomer linked it on fb fwiw

tombot, can i ask for your thoughts on the vibe in dc right now

revived DC thread to answer since I don't know what anybody else is vibing

cool, thx

Reading the thread title, my first thought was: I guess we're going to find out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-actually-a-fascist/2016/12/09/e193a2b6-bd77-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html

Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie does not like the 'plebian' method of resolving its tasks. It was always hostile of Jacobinism, which cleared the road for the development of bourgeois society with its blood. The fascists are immeasurably closer to the decadent bourgeoisie than the Jacobins were to the rising bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the sober bourgeoisie does not look very favorably even upon the fascist mode of resolving its tasks, for the concussions, although they are brought forth in the interests of bourgeois society, are linked up with dangers to it. Therefore, the opposition between fascism and the bourgeois parties.

The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled. The sober circles of bourgeois society have followed with misgivings the work of the dentist Pilsudski, but in the last analysis they have become reconciled to the inevitable, though with threats, with horse-trades and all sorts of bargaining. Thus the petty bourgeoisie's idol of yesterday becomes transformed into the gendarme of capital.

Economist writing of risks re: Trump's policies raises the dread F word:

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-corporatism-innovation-economic-growth-by-edmund-s--phelps-2017-01

Finally, and worst of all, Trump thinks that bullying corporations, such as Ford and Carrier, and aiding others, such as Google, will boost output and employment. This is an expansion of corporatist policy the likes of which have not been seen since the fascist German and Italian economies of the 1930s. If this thinking persists, there will be more interference in the business sector to protect incumbents and block newcomers. This will clog the economy’s arteries, most likely preventing far more innovation than it stimulates among the established insiders.

I don't know enough about economics to know if this dude's focus on innovation is right-on or not, just saw it and thought of this thread

that "red blood of patriotism" line was legit terrifying

(in the inauguration speech)

a truly hitlerian speech all around

emboldened mods starting already imo

under the guise of "discriminatory speech"

what freedom of speech i say to ye brothers and sisters

let us stand together and in unison let our voices pound against the drum of fascism

http://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

this comment of mine has aged "well"

TLDR: he's a fascist

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, June 14, 2016 9:02 PM (seven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Corey Robin:

Before I wrote my book on conservatism, I was a student of the politics of fear. My first book, which was based on more than a decade of research, was an analysis of how political theorists since Hobbes have understood the politics of fear. In the second part of the book, I offered my own counter-analysis of the politics of fear in the United States. Fear, American Style, I called it.

Here’s what I learned about it: the worst, most terrible things that the United States has done have almost never happened through an assault on American institutions; they’ve always happened through American institutions and practices.

These are the elements of the American polity that have offered especially potent tools and instruments of intimidation and coercion: federalism, the separation of powers, social pluralism and the rule of law.

All the elements of the American experience that liberals and conservatives have so cherished as bulwarks of American freedom have also been sources and instruments of political fear. In all the cases I looked at, coercion, intimidation, repression and violence were leveraged through these mechanisms, not in spite of them....

The truth of the matter is that Trump and Bannon could get most if not all of what they want – in terms of the revanchism of race, gender and class, the white Christian nation that they seem to wish for – without strongman politics.

American institutions offer more than enough resources for revanchism. That Trump and Bannon seem not to know this – that they are willing to make opponents of the military and the security establishment, that they are willing to arouse into opposition and conjure enemies out of potential friends – may be their biggest weakness of all. And if they do know this, but seek strongman politics anyway, then they’re willing to put strongman politics above and beyond the project of social revanchism that their base seeks. Which may be their second biggest weakness of all.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/02/american-institutions-wont-keep-you-safe-trumps-excesses

xxp I got eight paragraphs into that before thinking to check the date.

this comment of mine has aged "well"

TLDR: he's a fascist
― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, June 14, 2016 9:02 PM (seven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, February 2, 2017 1:04 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep

Actually Donald Trump isn't a fascist, he is a dumb whiny man-baby with freedom fries where his testicles should be

I'd like to amend my previous post:

Actually Donald Trump isn't just a fascist, he is also a dumb whiny man-baby with freedom fries where his testicles should be

Sometimes the difference between being a whiny man-baby or being a fascist man-baby is whether you are the head of state.

that dorothy thompson piece is awesome

Dorothy Thompson == Esquire link

Very telling quote:

I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others.

Remind you of anyone?

Esquire Harpers (sorry)

so it turns out that even if he'd like to be an authoritarian, it's too much work

btw someone just wrotes a book about the Nazis' use of opioids, so i suggest we all send it to Yam for his birthday.

wasn't it about nazis and speed?

yes, the rank-and-file Nazis relied largely on speed, acc to the NYTBR piece i read, but the Fuhrer's personal cocktails were a bit more diverse.

At some point, wasn't he getting loaded up with a lot of same shit JFK would regularly get dosed with?

i'm an ilxor, not a doctor.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/07/518986612/author-says-hitler-was-blitzed-on-cocaine-and-opiates-during-the-war

just mr morbius, please

really want to read that book, thanks for the reminder doc

"Dr. Morell prescribed well"

Great chemists, the Germans.

Hmm, is the jury still out on this?

Well, you can't say we did not give him a chance ... to prove beyond a doubt that he is a fascist.

Perhaps "dysfunctional fascism" is the best description of this admin

can't even make the trains run on time ffs

My old teacher has written a book about Trump as a fascist, based on his campaign and his inauguration speech, and we discussed it yesterday in my anti-fascism study-group. And it struck me, while his argument that Trump is a fascist was pretty well done, based on his campaign style/imagery/rhetoric and the speech, and the politics that he had done in the first few weeks, the analysis didn't really describe what has happened since then. If 'Trumpism' is a thing, if Trump was trying to be a fascist leader, then his project has pretty much failed completely by now. The Luther Strange fiasco might have been the final nail in the coffin.

Of course, Steve Bannon is still out there, trying to create a new wave for 2018 with people like Roy Moore, so it's not as if fascism in America has been defeated. But 'Trumpism'? That's pretty much over, and has left a semi-senile twitter-feed in charge of a country. IMO.

The “kneel before Zod” approach is closer to how Trump thought the job would be than most folks understood at the time https://t.co/dIYrXEeyGi

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 14, 2017

I still can't believe that clip exists, it sends chills down my spine just thinking of it

she is 100% one of those reality show contestants whose villainy was actually maybe underplayed.

This thread hasn't been updated in a while. I guess the question is moot now, isn't it?

the answer is yes

If 'Trumpism' is a thing, if Trump was trying to be a fascist leader, then his project has pretty much failed completely by now. The Luther Strange fiasco might have been the final nail in the coffin.

Of course, Steve Bannon is still out there, trying to create a new wave for 2018 with people like Roy Moore, so it's not as if fascism in America has been defeated. But 'Trumpism'? That's pretty much over, and has left a semi-senile twitter-feed in charge of a country. IMO.

― Frederik B, Saturday, November 4, 2017 6:26 PM (eight months ago)

That's our Freddie.

in the sense that Trumpism is comprised of a single characteristic - fealty to Trump - it definitely has a short shelf-life. once he isn't around to win elections it's not like he's left any kind of coherent ideology behind him that the GOP is going to follow.

The man will go down as one of the greatest con artists in history. Its breathtaking.

that his marks were among the greatest suckers is more breathtaking

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was taking a decades-long piss all over the American educational system. A fact is just an opinion uttered with more indignance and volume.

I disagree that Trumpism will go away when he does, because it's not really about fealty to him specifically, it's about the fascist qualities that he represents--that "our guy" can and should violate any laws/rules/norms/mores towards the end of empowering "our side" (conservative white people). The Right-Wing Authoritarian personality demands that there always be a single powerful face on this fascist impulse, but I think you'd be surprised at how flexible the fascist-voting (i.e. Republican) base could transfer all of that energy to someone else if Fox News told them to.

It's the "we've always been at war with eastasia" thing. Because their entire ideology is characterized by dishonesty and bad-faith, even the most militant 'pedes could easily wake up tomorrow, get the new talking points, and start shouting about how they've always loathed Trump and they're 100% behind the new guy.

that "our guy" can and should violate any laws/rules/norms/mores towards the end of empowering "our side" (conservative white people)

this is standard GOP operating procedure going back as far as I can remember and is independent of Trump (and reflective of a much deeper problem in the american polis) - it can't be accurately called Trumpism, because it predates him.

they've always loathed Trump and they're 100% behind the new guy

exhibit A: Dubya

ie someone the GOP backed to the hilt, broke laws for, violated norms, followed into the abyss of military and economic disaster - then promptly completely disavowed as if it never happened and none of them were complicit

Yeah, that's just it, I think "Trumpism" is just a word for the fully-unveiled Right. Among many other functions, the authoritarian leader serves as a ready-made scapegoat

The Good Germans can let their very intentional ignorance absolve them, and let the face of their party take the blame

The fucker's military chopper escort just flew over my flat. Only time in my life I've regretted not keep an RPG in the spare room...

i think it's likely the key difference with Trump vs virtually anyone else in the GOP who might wind up in the WH is that he feels no shame about his bigotries and revels in them, and his core feeds off it and it encourages them. Even a vile fucker like Pence, for all the damage he'd be capable of politically, would never do the kind of damage DJT has done in that regard. I'm not saying no one else at present it out there who is capable of it, i mean now that they see it works it's entirely possible it would work again, but I think Trump is somewhat singular in that aspect. a combination of his image and his personality and his complete gleeful sociopathy and deep stupidity. i'm not saying the GOP isn't full of people like this, i'm just saying Trump may possibly be the only one for whom completely going all-in on it works for him.

nothing we don't already know but

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006154922/fascism-leaders-america-trump.html

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opin--

nope

it's just a professor talking about how donald trump is a fascist

on a video

sitting on a chair

Yes

TRUMP: "Media and academic institutions push flat-out assaults on our histories, traditions, and values." #wut pic.twitter.com/UCQtkcHgWJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 24, 2019

man fuck this guy and fuck all his enablers and toadies. forever.

All his children (and Jared) look kind of low grade horrified/sick of it all, or am I just hopefully projecting?

man it must be super hard to read the teleprompter when you're zonked out of your mind on pills

that is something else

is Miller the only guy from the OG trump team that’s still in the tent?

I mean besides the idiot kids

didn't know they stacked shit that high iirc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKZGIvLQD9I

He does sound completely stoned, doesnt he? WTF is going on?

ivanka’s probably just rethinking the whole nipple thing from yesterday and jared is thinking about playing spies

it's v interesting that he leads with "faceless" as his skin melts over his eyes

I had not been aware of “the trump prophecy.” Thank you i guess xp

Wow, I hadn't seen any of his 'speech' until just now. He looks and sounds genuinely unwell. I think this is the first time I've seriously thought (rather than simply hoped) he might not survive four years as president. If I'd seen that in real time, I might've questioned whether he'd even survive his stint at the podium.

He was up the whole night tweeting and whatever. I don’t think he’s actually sick—just burnt.

This guy sadly seems like he’s got longevity.

stamina, never wasted a single calorie on exercise

honestly, I’d believe that he’s mostly fueled on overcooked steaks and diet cokes

having had an emotional teetotaler grandpa who was always a bit incoherent but prone to rambling, it makes sense

If I'd seen that in real time, I might've questioned whether he'd even survive his stint at the podium.

For a month or so I've been torn bcz I want him to be the nominee, and tank & take the entire alt-right project down in flames, but I don't have confidence he'll be capable / functional through the primaries.

I’d endorse either of those things but I think they’re both too optimistic.

reagan had alzheimer's and his cabinet and personal staff managed to keep it under wraps, even though reagan's public appearances gave everyone some pretty obvious clues that he was losing it. of course, the media dutifully underplayed it.

Trump’s been a regressive caricature of what a cynic thinks a rich man’s internal life looks like for his entire adult life and his public appearances have yet to contradict that impression.

He could just stammer something about a guy, you know, maybe he’s *vague gesture implying racist trope* and *something about a job or money* and maybe glower a few times and still pull off a debate

Hell, I watched all of the Trump/Clinton debates and while he made no actual points or policy rebuttals he definitely won at least one when his entire rejoinder was to point to his planted audience member after being told he was a bad person to say “yeah but your husband too”

i'd rather have another republican candidate in 2020. i think it's hard to oppose someone like this, who has sucked the whole country into his narcissistic vortex.

Reagan's public persona (afai could t) was generally mollifying, so the coverup worked with that. Trump's preferred attitude is to attack and disparage, and he lashes out blindly when he feels threatened; the more he realises he's not capable, the more he tries to compensate through flailing, to less effect.

If there was nothing in his way and his enablers were were in charge, he might possibly make it through the debates. He's driven away dozens of enablers, is flipping out more & more, and is getting so obviously impaired (see how he was barely propping himself up at a twisted angle during the morning's mogadon press conference) that in six months the American news media might be starting to think about tentatively pointing it out.

(Also seems to me that either his compensatory speed-etc regimen isn't working as well, or his drug pipeline has recently been affected by the staff turnover.)

I don’t think most people pay much attention and supporters generally think throwing clouds of flak in the air is his strategy and the apparent pivots and randomness are just how you keep opponents from acting

many xxxps but i know of the trump prophecy only because it is the lowest user-rated film on a site i frequent

i tried to watch the trump prophecy a month ago, but besides being crazy it is also extremely boring.

just learned from the wiki page about that film that trump's evangelical followers are apparently obsessed with comparing him to...cyrus the great? apparently that's a thing.

It's very much a thing in the bible, so it's not that weird. If you're a fanatical christian, that is.

Yeah, they think Trump is a sinner who God has chosen To carry out a holy purpose for mysterious reasons iirc. So that’s how they square up the cruelty, viciousness, venality and arrogance of Donald Trump with Christian morality. A nice sleight of hand.

Or, as has been posited, evangelicals are themselves cruel and vicious and venal and arrogant and so Trump is just naturally their dude.

I mean, sure, but also they do say this about him. That is how they navigate the contradiction.

Yeah, they think Trump is a sinner who God has chosen To carry out a holy purpose for mysterious reasons iirc. So that’s how they square up the cruelty, viciousness, venality and arrogance of Donald Trump with Christian morality

also, Old Lunch v much otm. I’d say a scary number of them actually get off on the cruelty.

Right. The God stuff isn’t necessarily a “good faith” explanation of why they like him.

well have you READ the old testament?

there are just a handful of divinely sanctioned genocides based on whether or not you belong to the correct civilization, nbd

old donny junior trussed on the mount at moriah while papa checks twitter to see if he offs him

Erik Loomis has been good on this front this week (and also since 2016, basically)

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/02/the-governments-official-promotion-of-fascist-histories

What the BLM tweeting does is assure right-wing westerners associated with mining, logging, grazing, and oil and gas that the government is openly on their side, not the tribes, not the environmentalists, not the hikers or rafters, not the residents of Denver or Portland or Seattle who use these lands.

This is culture war, pure and simple. And a history of genocide and exploitation is being used as a weapon by the fascist side of that war.

lol for many years, when I saw the acronym BLM, it meant, "Bureau of Land Management" -- for the past few years, BLM = Black Lives Matter. This quoted section was momentarily confusing because of that.

I have to say that I increasingly think no, he is not a fascist. He is too incompetent to be a fascist. He is too chaotic to be a fascist. He is too petty and self-interested even to be a fascist. A fascist administration would take decisive action to slow the pandemic and then use the situation to consolidate power. He just kind of fumbles around and looks for opportunities for grift.

I get that there are touches of fascist demagoguery in there, like attempts to chasten the media, racism, etc. But there's not much sense of a larger program, just a kind of instinctual political survival game.

Yeah, kinda. I think this crisis has shown that there is a difference between people like Trump and Bolsonaro, and people like Orban and Duterte.

A fascist would probably bother to appoint people to key positions and then make them do things.

He is too incompetent to be a fascist. He is too chaotic to be a fascist.

why are these things mutually exclusive? is fascism by definition administratively capable?

Ineffectual fascism may still be fascist but not have the same bite to it. ICE is a fascist police force perpetrating genocide but it was under Obama too.

"fascist administration would take decisive action to slow the pandemic and then use the situation to consolidate power."

This is really questionable.

fascist administration or prospective ones rarely waste states of exception and quickly get to work dissolving democratic institutions to consolidate their power. i think man alive is rightl. for all his flaws he's not a fascist.

feels a little no true scotsman but ok point taken

I guess he could just be a really shitty fascist. But he doesn't seem to have much of a program or organization. He has a bunch of ideas and he's influenced by some people (Miller e.g.) who seem closer to fascism. He probably borrows some ideas and style from fascists, and he even admires fascists. But Trump is ultimately just about Trump and too dumb and short-attention-spanned to really implement anything like a fascist program. And he wasn't put forth by a fascist party either, he more just kind of snuck in through the back door of the GOP.

He probably frequently borrows some ideas and style from fascists, and he even admires fascists. But Trump is ultimately just about Trump...

fixed

Yeah, Bannon seems fascisty, Miller as well. But Trump is more just a racist and a narcissist and a misogynist and etc etc etc

Bannon looks like the kind of guy who'd be dead within an hour of contracting Covid.

Also he slightly resembles the Covid bug.

xp I think Bannon wanted to make Trump into a fascist but Trump is sort of untameable

Yeah, fascism is about order through strength (or vice versa), and Trump is neither strong nor orderly.

I agree, man alive

The leader of the fascist party is a fascist by definition. If he’s empowering and enabling fascist politicians and groups, he’s a fascist. Saying Trump isn’t a fascist is like saying edgelords who shout the N-word aren’t racist because they were “just joking”—what matters is the outcome, not whatever muddled and stupid intent goes on inside his head.

the best policing of calling things fascist is stephen kotkin saying franco wasn't a fascist

yeah he's a fascist in the same way Joe Flacco is a Super Bowl MVP

it's funny but i remember the ilx debate over whether the band queen was fascist being much longer and more intense than the debate over whether donald trump is fascist

arguing over whether something fits some fixed definition of fascism is a bullshit waste of time but i'm suspicious of ppl who are *adamant* that trump or whoever right wing scumbag isn't at all fascist

the internet is grand

it doesn't matter what fascist means what matters is that i get to call ppl it

SLAB

otm

Really not very good at being a fascist

This slo-mo sunday-night-massacre, and the inability of anyone to stop him, is freaking me out.

basically I’m thinking euro american culture is inherently protofascist & drawing the line is a fools errand

If you're gonna pursue that line, it's not just Euro-American culture tbh.

where did I say just

but who are we talking about here, where did most of the biggest colonisers come from

Yeah, that's fair.