Thread of What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

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.

basically the standard line in this culture is that fascism is bad and colonialism was/is generally good, no wonder we can’t understand/prevent the former

Ime 'colonialism was awful for the most part but the Brits were benevolent barring an exception or two' is a fairly mainstream school of historical 'analysis' in English-speaking Canada.

everyone thinks the empire they identify with was uniquely benevolent and/or unfairly picked on, we even can’t get past this, fuck nationalism

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/18/soldiers-of-the-boogaloo-david-neiwert-on-the-far-rights-plans-for-a-new-civil-war/

On the politics of this comparison:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/19/the-trouble-with-comparisons/

Now that we've thoroughly covered Trump, it is time to ask the next burning question: Is US Attorney General William Barr a Fascist?

the more important question: is he the biggest attorney general fascist of all time? because if he isn't, then discussing how bad barr sucks is distracting from the important issue of how bad the past bad AGs were

damn it’s true; Trump cannot possibly be a fascist because he clearly does not have that funny little moustache

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/20/coronavirus-update-us

President Trump threatened Wednesday to “hold up” federal funding to Michigan if the state proceeds with a plan to send absentee ballot applications to all of its 7.7 million voters in a bid to mitigate the risks of in-person voting in the state’s primary and general election this year.

Trump did not specify which funds he might withhold, and he has not always followed through with similar threats.

His message — delivered in a morning tweet — comes as many states grapple with how to safely proceed with elections. Amid the pandemic, Trump has repeatedly railed against mail-in voting, claiming it is subject to fraud and has hurt Republicans in previous elections.

fashy fuck

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/05/28/why-we-need-postal-democracy/

"In fact, there’s little evidence to back Trump’s assertion that voting by mail favors Democrats. Studies of voting by mail in practice reveal no systemic advantage for either party. In the disputed Wisconsin election, The New York Times found that mailed ballots gave a significant advantage to the unexpectedly victorious Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Jill Karofsky. But some experts believe that may have been because the Democratic Party did a better job in this election of urging its voters to cast ballots by mail. Voting by mail may be especially attractive to rural and older voters who have difficulty getting to polling stations—both demographics that tend to skew Republican. Trump himself votes by mail, and Republicans have long aggressively urged their voters to do so where it is allowed. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Republican National Committee is calling it “easy, convenient, and secure.”"

It's not about whether it favours the Dems though, is it? It's to sow doubt over the validity of the coming election. It's the same game he played in 2016, anticipating his loss.

so tired of all this winning

"It's not about whether it favours the Dems though, is it?"

I reckon it is about that. He can sow doubts on validity all he likes, it won't matter if he loses.

If he loses he finally gets to have his media network and get all the adulation with less of the hassle, don't see why that would be a problem for him.

I sometimes wondered why he didn't just half-ass the rest of his term so he could slide into that network head job he so clearly wants, but I realize the hook of him and his cronies squawking 24-7 about losing an "unfair" election is exactly what he wants to start off with gangbuster ratings.

I've been (slowly) reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," and it's really remarkable how many at least surface characteristics and beliefs Asshole shares with Hitler. Fortunately, the differences are dramatic and, in the case of the latter, ultimately much more determinative.

Sorry, bit of a tangent from that, but which books about history in the 20s / 30s would people reccomend? Bearing in mind that I have probably read enough about Hitler already.

a rare conservative critique of the right's embrace of neo-nazis

https://thebulwark.com/is-holocaust-denial-conservative-now/

xpost If you've never read it, "The Great War and Modern Memory" by Paul Fussell might be of particular interest to you, as a writer.

Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a literate, literary, and unapologetic account of the Great War, the war that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world.

This brilliant work illuminates the trauma and tragedy of modern warfare in fresh, revelatory ways. Exploring the work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen, Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for those writers who--with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning--most effectively memorialized World War I as an historical experience. Dispensing with literary theory and elevated rhetoric, Fussell grounds literary texts in the mud and trenches of World War I and shows how these poems, diaries, novels, and letters reflected the massive changes--in every area, including language itself--brought about by the cataclysm of the Great War. For generations of readers, this work has represented and embodied a model of accessible scholarship, huge ambition, hard-minded research, and haunting detail.

man those world war guys just can't shut up about sigfried sassoon, OKAY, we GET IT, he was in a WAR and he wrote POEMS jesus

good memoirs and entertaining novels as well.

TS: Sassoon vs. Zazous.

so the senate majority is moving forward with an investigation of the democratic nominee's son

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/20/senate-committee-authorizes-subpoena-in-hunter-biden-probe-270741

“If there’s nothing there, we’ll find out there’s nothing there. But if there’s something there, the American people need to know that.”

Richard Evans’s Third Reich quadrilogy is a very good and readable nuts and bolts history of the Nazis. The first book is all about 1919-1933.

Mona Charon using a pull quote that repudiates Steve King isn’t something I ever expected to see

Yes.