Thread of What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

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"!