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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8718 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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This article is from a historian who thinks Trump is fascist. He points to these specific things:

  • Exalts the Nation and Often Race Above the Individual

Donald Trump claims immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our nation,” a turn of phrase used by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. He also vilifies racial or quasi-racial groups: Nazis spread libels about Jews, Trump falsely spreads baseless rumors about Haitian immigrants, “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” warns his followers that “Your children are in danger. You can’t go to school with these people [immigrants], these people are from a different planet.” In his first campaign, he promised what he described as a “Muslim ban.”

There are plans to operationalize these views, including the creation of mass detention (concentration?) camps to facilitate mass deportations, which Trump has made clear will include at least some immigrants currently in the country legally.

  • Associated with a Centralized Autocratic Government Headed by a Dictatorial Leader

This one is almost too easy: Trump says, “‘You’re not going to be a dictator are you?’ I said ‘No, no, no, other than day one.” And later, “I only want to be a dictator for one day.” Please scroll up to see how other grants of ‘temporary’ dictatorial powers to fascists turned out. It is a claim he has reiterated, rather than softened.

  • Severe Economic and Social Regimentation

Trump also proposes to radically restructure the US economy through an across-the-board 20% tariff on all goods entering the United States, discouraging trade. That’s actually a very traditional fascist economic policy: fascist governments tend to favor ‘autarky‘ – closed, self-sufficient economic systems (Adam Tooze in his book Wages of Destruction goes in to extensive detail on Nazi dreams of autarky) though they don’t generally achieve autarky because it turns out that it is a terrible economic system that doesn’t work very well. Still, massive across the board tariffs certainly seem to count as severe economic regimentation.

  • Forcible Suppression of Opposition

Trump has said that there is an “enemy within” which he would handle with military force. Asked to clarify who he meant as the “enemy within” he has clarified that he means political opponents like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. Asked to back off this rhetoric, he has instead doubled down on it, expanding his ‘enemies’ to include the press. He’s also threatened members of the January 6 Select Committee, declaring “they should be sent to jail,” and is now on social media threatening to prosecute anyone he claims ‘cheated’ against him, keeping in mind that Trump falsely claims he was cheated in the last election, a point on which no court in the land agrees.

Note as well how the Italian fascists suppressed political opposition not through state action but through state inaction – by refusing to stop their squads of violent thugs who were intimidating and murdering opponents. Likewise, Trump has promised repeatedly to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists, “on day one”, effectively a promise of impunity for his most violent supporters.

I think this is all kind of ridiculous, and if these four items are the mark of Fascism, then I could easily make a comparison to the Democratic party.

  • Exalts the Nation and Often Race Above the Individual

DEI, Affirmative Action, celebrating immutable traits over individual accomplishment, etc.

  • Associated with a Centralized Autocratic Government Headed by a Dictatorial Leader

Which party would like to give power back to the states on issues like school choice, abortion, etc? And which party in contrast has been encouraging centralized power? Which party wants to remove the electoral college and pack the Supreme Court the minute they lost control of it?

  • Severe Economic and Social Regimentation

Which side wanted vaccine passports and to shut down "non-essential businesses?" Which side is currently arguing for price ceilings?

  • Forcible Suppression of Opposition

Which side is currently prosecuting a politician under "novel legal theories?" Which side has been calling for censoring political opponents on social media?

It seems to me that Fascism (and in the downstream, Nazi-ism) has features that has always been acceptable in the United States in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Being able to compare your political enemies to Nazis is just a matter of who has control of the talking heads at this time.

OK that's all very fair. I guess what confuses me (or I understand now) is that Hitler accusation mostly just equals fascist accusation?

Like it seems to me, as a historically ignorant normie, that there have been lot's of fascists and dictators in history and active in the world today. When I think Hitler, sure, it's bad that he was a dictator, but his two biggest sins seem to be WWII and the Holocaust. A lot of what's notably bad about him being a fascist dictator vs. one of lot's of dictators in history is his usage of his fascist dictatation to commit those two sins.

So is the implication that Trump is Hitler tied to the idea that he will do things like the Holocaust and WWII, or just object level being a fascist dictator and Hitler was one also. Because I feel like the former is disingenuous.

I mean, yeah, those couple of oopsies did kinda cast fascist dictatorships in a negative light for a lot of people, I think.

I think it's the classic Motte/Bailey.

Devereaux's citations for defining fascism are an online dictionary and Eco's points of ur-fascism. Neither are a serious analysis of what fascism is. Devereaux writes as an academic, but he didn't think to look at a single academic definition of fascism? He's a historian, and he didn't make any historical survey?

The post is lazy. It should not be taken seriously.

What really irked me was that he ended his two month hiatus early just to post that.

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